


A Study in C

by tei



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Music school AU, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: John Watson, childhood french horn prodigy, has spent the last eight years playing in a US army band. Now, he's returned to London to finally attend school at the Royal College of Music: eight years older than the rest of his cohort, and having suffered a mysterious decline in his playing skills.He doesn't know what to expect.He was not expecting this.





	1. New World Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic with the best of intentions, really. It taught me a lot about the level of completion or at least outlining that I need in order to start posting something, so I'm grateful to it. But in all honesty, by the time I was belatedly forcing out the last few chapters purely to not have an abandoned WIP haunting me for the rest of my life-- and I back-dated them so the thing wouldn't pop up to the top of my AO3 profile-- I was pretty unhappy with this. 
> 
> I think I severely underestimated the amount of ickiness it was going to make me feel to take real-world events that I am not super far removed from personally and slot them into the "On the Great Alkali Plain" section of STUD. The ick level turned out to be... rather high. And the characterization meanders, and themes I meant to develop never quite get there, and... oh, writerly whining, whine, whine whine ;)
> 
> That said: here's the fic, it's done, it's a music school AU, and for all its faults if does say at least a few things I wanted to say about that environment. So if you need a music school AU-- and god knows I could have, back in the day-- have at it!
> 
> "You live and learn. At any rate, you live." --Douglas Adams

“Watson. John Watson.”

The girl at the front desk just flicked her eyes in acknowledgement at him and started scrolling on her computer. John stifled a groan as he finally released his grip on his suitcase, slipped his backpack off, and released the tight, nervous grip he had been keeping on his horn case the entire hour-long Tube ride from Heathrow airport. London was his city; he shouldn’t feel so much like a country bumpkin startled by everything in the big city. But, well, eight years in small-town Oklahoma would do that to a man.

The front desk girl— her nametag said “Molly”— frowned at something on her screen. “Are you an international student?” she asked.

“Ah- no,” said John. “If there’s an international address in my student file, uh, I was playing in a US army band for the past— while. But I’m a British citizen as well.” He cleared his throat, wishing he hadn’t just revealed as much as he had.

He had no idea how the students here were going to react to him. Milling around in the lobby of the well-appointed, modern dormitory building, they looked impossibly young, many being led around by parents carrying their baggage or instrument cases for them, gently depositing their offspring into their new lives as college music students.

John, at twenty-five, had eight years experience playing in an army band in Oklahoma, a place he wouldn’t blame these kids for not being able to identify the country it was in, let alone pick it out on a map. He had been supporting himself and saving a decent chunk of money solely off of his french horn playing for longer than some of his classmates had been playing seriously at all. And yet, looking around at the happy, confident new students he was now supposed to be one of, he couldn’t help but feel hopelessly out of his depth.

“Here you go,” said Molly, handing him a key with “431” printed on it. “Elevators are on the far side of the lobby. If you need anything, I’m Molly. I’m work-study, third year, so feel free to come down and ask me questions any time.” She gave him a bright smile, and he muttered his thanks and picked up his backpack and horn case again.

His dorm room was small— just a bed and a desk, with the shared bathroom down the hall— but it was his own, and after twenty-four hours of air travel, John was just grateful to be able to swing the door shut, lie down on the tiny bed and be alone.

He stared up at the ceiling, his mind somehow simultaneously whirling with thoughts and completely blank. Through it all, though, shone the one thought that had been a constant companion since he had first picked up the french horn at twelve years old: _you should go practice._

He sighed and clicked his phone to life to check the time. It was three in the afternoon, in London at least; he had no desire to know how many hours he had been awake at this point, but knew that sleeping in the middle of the day was the worst way to deal with jet lag. Fortunately, even army musicians had to do a certain amount of basic military training, so it was with a familiar feeling of numb resignation that John pushed himself to his feet, refreshed his deodorant and brushed his teeth, then grabbed his horn case and headed back downstairs.

The dorm rooms were fairly well soundproofed, since the dorm had been built expressly for the Royal College of Music. But John wanted to go to the main building, see the space where he would finally put “all that band crap”— as his teacher had called it when he’d started auditioning for military bands— behind him, and step into the world he’d always known he really wanted to be a part of.

It took longer than John had expected, but eventually he had figured out the key card business, found an empty practice room, and trawled through several others to locate a functional chair and music stand, and closed the door behind him.

And immediately regretted it.

These practice rooms were _not_ soundproof. Oh, there had been some attempt made, but he could hear his neighbours clearly: on his right, a violinist playing an etude that John knew he had heard before but couldn’t place; on his left, a trumpet player with an involved lip-buzzing warmup. And both of them were being fairly quiet— if he could hear them, they were _definitely_ going to hear him.

He felt immediately transported back to the 77th Army Band in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Trying desperately to keep his heart rate under control as the bright lights of the concert stage shone on him and the four other members of the brass quintet. The terrifying feeling of knowing what to do, how to play, and his body simply not responding. The ease with which he had approached the instrument, which had carried him from youth orchestra in London through auditions for dozens of military bands to finally one which would pay the bills and convince his mother that maybe he could make a living playing music, suddenly evaporating. His vibrations of his lips against each other, a complex movement which he could have done in his _sleep_ after eleven years of obsessive daily practice, suddenly just… not working.

He had made it through that performance, somehow, sweat pouring down his forehead and cacking almost every single note. An embarrassing mess. And it had continued that way, more or less, from that point forward. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but it was obvious that something was going wrong. He simply couldn’t make his lips do what they used to. Like a gremlin was in his mind, intercepting the impulses before they came to fruition on his body.  
The worst part was, nobody even seemed to notice. Oh sure, it probably would have been even worse if his colleagues _had_ noticed, but as it was… it wasn’t like they played difficult music all that often. John had been perfectly capable of coasting by on half or a third of his previous ability, doing the “band crap” that his teacher had so looked down upon, just fine.

That was when he started obsessively googling the Royal College of Music every night. He had read every word on the school’s website, every teacher’s bio, every student’s testimonial. When he had applied and sent a tape in lieu of an audition he had assumed there was no way he would ever get in. After all, he was a shadow of the player he’d been in high school. So it took had taken him entirely by surprise when the acceptance package had arrived.

And some part of him was still surprised, sitting in the practice room on the first day of the rest of his life.

John took a shaky breath, rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, and decided to just man up and do it. People would have to hear him play at some point. He might as well establish his incompetence right now, before anyone knew him.

His hands were steady again as he screwed the bell into the horn and shoved the mouthpiece in. He blew a few puffs of air into it silently, then took a deep breath and started playing.

It didn’t feel _awful_. Better than he could really have hoped for, after a flight around the world and so little sleep. He started into his scale routine, relaxing into the same patterns that had started his day every day since he was prepubescent, enjoying being alone—

\--until there was a knock on his door.

_Oh god._ Why hadn't he covered the window? Plenty of people covered the little window in the door of the practice room with paper— he had seen the other rooms like this. Now someone had seen him and probably realized he was new and dumb and wanted to introduce themselves—

“John Watson! What on earth are you doing here?”

John stared for a moment in blank shock, the plump, pale face in front of him resolving into someone vaguely familiar—

“Oh my god, Mike!”

Mike Stamford, bassoonist, London Young Symphonia— how old would he be, then? John hastily tried to recall the details. He and Mike had been among the few high school musicians in the wind and brass section of the LYS, he remembered that much. And Mike had been even younger than him. Still, he must have graduated from at least one degree program by now, unless something had gone very wrong.

“Are you a grad student?” John ventured, standing in in front of him awkwardly with his horn still dangling from his left hand.

“And hopefully not even that, soon,” retorted Mike with a grin. “It’ll be good to get out finally. Didn’t you go off to get shot at in America?”

John rolled his eyes, but Mike’s levity was infectious and he felt himself smiling a little. “They don’t generally send bands into battle,” he said, “not all that useful when it really comes down to it. So no. I went off to America to drink cheap beer and learn how to drive doughnuts in a pickup truck.”

Mike barked out a laugh and suddenly pulled John in for hug. John hugged him back, feeling grateful for even this bizarre, nearly-forgotten friendship, and wanting to volunteer more information despite having decided that he wouldn’t. “So I decided to come back and learn how to play for real,” he said.

Mike clapped him on the back. “Well, I won’t get in your way,” he said. “Want to go for a drink some time, though?”

John thought it over. By sheer bad luck, the cheapest flight had been the day before the first day of class, which also happened to be the day of ensemble auditions— when he would be ranked with all the other horn students in the school and placed in a band or orchestra. God, he hoped it would be an orchestra. “Not tonight,” he said. “But I have my audition tomorrow afternoon— I’m sure I’ll be able to use one after that.”

“It’s a date,” said Mike, and left John alone to his horn, and his metronome, and his fear.


	2. Tzigane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John goes to his first class, and something odd happens. Well, someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that Ravel's Tzigane actually makes an appearance in this chapter... but when I think violin + asshole showoff, well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpnfAdGP5CQ

By more sheer bad luck, John’s time slot for his ensemble audition turned out to be exactly an hour after the end of his very first academic class. So it was in a considerably more irritated and distracted frame of mind than he would have preferred for the beginning of his post-secondary academic career that he slipped into the lecture hall for Introduction to Musicology five minutes late, and avoided the eyes of the professor and everyone in the room as he made his way straight for the back corner.

He threw himself into a chair and tried to disguise his heavy breathing, only to realize too late that he wasn’t alone back there; although the majority of the eager young students were clustered near the front, there was one other man in the back row with him, with just one chair in between the two of them.

John had never seen someone’s posture so precisely calibrated to convey utter boredom and distaste. Or at least, if he had, it had been long before the stiff posture and crisp haircuts of the military had become the accepted norm to him. So now it appeared almost obscene to John for someone to be throwing his body around like this in public: all long limbs, knees splayed outwards and thin hips sunk forwards on the seat, a lush tangle of jet-black hair pouring over his eyes. For all that his posture conveyed studied disinterest, the man was dressed better than the other students; black trousers and a crisp blue button-up shirt where his fellow students were in jeans and tee-shirts. He had his chin resting on the cup of his left hand, while his right held up a mobile phone right in front of his face, thumb flying furiously across the screen.

John realized suddenly that he was staring, and snapped out of it to pull a fresh notebook from his bag. He tried to focus his attention on the front of the room, where the chalkboard with the staff pre-inked on it had the name of the professor scribbled: Evan Drebber, D.Mus. Drebber was standing at a lectern, flipping through the course outline as he explained the pace at which the class would progress through a survey of most of Western musical history. Apparently the next few weeks of John’s life would be spent listening to more Gregorian chant than he had ever heard before in his life.

John couldn’t help glancing back at the man in his row. All of the other students were listening with the rapt attention of the very nervous or very young. A few occasionally pulled out their phones to check the time, but kept them at hip level, theoretically out of sight of the professor. Surely texting furiously in the back of a classroom with your mobile right in front of your face was rather brazen?    


John tore his eyes away again and settled back into his seat. He called up in his mind the excerpts that he would be playing in his audition in just under two hours, and started trying to play through them in his mind. He had never been much good at visualization, but every teacher and book said that you should do it, so he tried to call to mind the exact feeling of taking a deep breath, preparing his lips to buzz, putting the horn to his face—

“Young man. _Young man._ You, in the back. Are you quite finished?” Prof. Drebber’s voice broke through his haze.

John startled, cold sweat suddenly appearing on his face. What  had he done? Was it that obvious just from his face that he wasn’t paying attention? Had he been called upon to answer a question of some sort, and hadn’t noticed?

“Is there something fascinating on your mobile that you’d like to share with the rest of the class?” said the professor.

Ah. Of course, he wasn’t addressing John. The eyes of the entire room were turning around now, focusing on the thin man slouched over his mobile two seats down from John. he gave no indication that he had noticed that he was being addressed. John cleared his throat.

Silence.

John cleared his throat again, then leaned over and tapped the man gently on the shoulder. “Uh,” he said, “the professor is… you’re… that is…”

He trailed off as an extraordinarily bright pair of eyes snapped up to meet his. The tall man’s face was as thin and ferocious as his angular frame would suggest, and his stare felt like being punched in the gut.

“…sorry,” John finished, and then immediately felt like an idiot. _Sorry_?

“If you’ve something more important to attend to,” the professor intoned in that dangerous, sarcastic way that John recognized as common to authority figures everywhere, “you’re welcome to leave the classroom.”

The inferno of the man’s gaze snapped from John to the Drebber, and then with no hesitation whatsoever, he simply nodded and unfolded himself from the tiny desk chair like a spider. “Ah,’ he murmured too quietly for it to have been truly meant for Drebber’s ears, “good.” He bent down and yanked a violin case out from under it, then swept past John and out the door of the lecture hall without a backwards glance.

 

Four hours later, John collapsed down into the slightly sticky pub bench with a sigh.

Mike grinned at him. “That good, huh?”

John tried to cast his mind back over the audition he had just played, through the haze that performance anxiety always created in him. It was difficult to tell, after the fact, which mistakes had been more significant than they seemed, and which less. He had certainly felt like he was falling on his face in slow motion, but then, he had no idea what level of playing was expected of a first-year undergraduate.

“Is it too early to get well and truly pissed?” he asked, in lieu of trying to explain all that.

Mike checked his watch and shrugged. “Dinnertime,” he said. “A few beers with my meal wouldn’t go amiss. I’ll join you.”

They ordered and before long were chatting amiably in the manner of two friends who had not much in common besides years’ worth of petty gossip to catch up on, and John was glad of it. He didn’t particularly care that their sectional instructor from youth orchestra had been fired from his teaching job for sleeping with a student, or that Nina the ‘cellist had been accepted to and then promptly kicked out of Curtis for infractions unknown, or any of the other little pieces of scandalous trivia about people John vaguely remembered. But it made him feel good that Mike wanted to tell him.

Eventually, Mike circled back around to John. How John was doing. Why John was back. What the heck John had been doing for eight long years in Nowhereville, America.

John settled on the truth, or at least some of it. “I wasn’t getting better,” he said simply. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I started getting worse after a while. All those marches. Offbeats for days. Every so often a brass quintet gig, but still. I needed to move on with my life.” He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and leaned his elbows on the table. “I was hoping I’d be able to get some freelance work in London too, honestly. But if that audition was anything to go by…” he sighed. “I dunno. I have some money saved up, but that ridiculously posh dorm is expensive. I dunno if I should stay there.”

“Yeah, that place is ridiculous,” said Mike. “I stayed there my first year. Horrendously pricey and full of spoiled kids discovering alcohol for the first time. You should find a flatmate. Be cheaper and more pleasant.”

“I don’t know anyone but you,” said John, privately hoping that Mike was about to offer to split with him— but no, Mike had mentioned a girlfriend a while back, and he was almost a proper grown adult. He probably had somewhere better to live than John could afford, and didn’t need John to help him afford it. “And anyway,” he continued, “nobody would want to live with me. They’re all excited kids, and I’m a weird broken-down twenty-something trying to make a go of post-secondary education for the first time. Not really a prime pick, flatmate-wise.”

Stamford huffed a little laugh. “Fair enough,” he said. “Although, you are actually the second person I’ve heard say that this week. Maybe the trick is to find someone weird and insufferable enough that they don’t mind you.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks, that sounds like a great idea,” said John, rolling his eyes.

A moment later he figured what the hell, and said, “wait, so you do know someone who needs a flatmate?”

“Well, yeah,” said Mike, “Kind of. Dunno, I was a bit joking. He’s a first-year. And a right twat. And a violinist to boot. Gone and fallen in love with some flat he can’t afford on his own, the posh prick.”

Despite the expletives, John noticed that Mike seemed to be saying them at least a little bit fondly, so he asked, “Who is he? How do you know him, if he’s a first-year?”

“Tutored him in theory,” said Mike, “for about a week. He wanted to make sure to pass out of the entrance exam and never have to do it during his degree. Seemed to think he could do that with all his classes— he was right disappointed when he discovered that besides theory and piano, he would actually have to attend and pass all the academic requirements as they came up in the course schedule.”

“Smart kid, then.”

“You could say that. Insane freak genius would also about cover it. Seriously, though, John, I dunno if you’d want to live with him. He’s got some weird hobbies. Science shit, who knows. You’d put a spoonful sugar in your tea one morning and discover he’s replaced it with some new salt he’s just discovered, or something.”

“Huh,” was all John could think of to say to that.

Mike shrugged. “He’d probably drink it himself too, to be fair.”

John knew it was a long shot, and maybe a little bit silly, but he also knew that he currently had one friend in all of London, and surely at least meeting another person socially would be good for him. Even if they were weird. “Well,” he said, “I don’t take sugar in my tea anyway. Why don’t you introduce us?”


	3. The Violinist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John meets his new flatmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I think of Sherlock Holmes playing the violin just for himself, it’s always Bach. (He plays it for Watson too, of course...) [Like this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBNTDlI1-nQ)
> 
> "Cack" is one of the (many) terms brass players use to mean a note coming out on the wrong partial. For an explanation of the harmonic series as it relates to brass instruments (and thus the main challenge of playing a brass instrument,) see [here.](https://www.earmaster.com/music-theory-online/ch04/chapter-4-6.html)

John met Mike the next day on the landing of one of the floors of practice rooms. Mike greeted him warmly, then led him through the maze of doors, listening intently until finally he peered through the window of a practice room and knocked twice, a little hesitantly. The Bach stopped, and the door opened.

John felt his eyes go wide and his mouth open.

It was the man from his musicology class. He was facing the far wall of the room, with the light switched off and no music stand in front of him, wearing dress trousers and a button-up shirt that still looked out of place in the sea of casually dressed students. He was a head taller than John, and his height was accentuated by the shock of black curls flopping crazily over his forehead.

John was able to almost get over his shock by the time he turned around, placing his violin carefully in the open case on a small table.

“Pershing’s Own?” he said. “Or something rather less distinguished?”

There was silence for a moment before John realized he was being addressed. “Ah— what?” he said. Then, his brain caught up just enough to say, “No, I auditioned there and was rejected. Ended up in an underfunded band in Oklahoma playing offbeats for eight years. Sorry, uh… so Mike told you I was in a US army band, then?”

Mike was leaning against the door with a small, rueful smile on his face. “Nope,” he said.

“Then how…”

“Never mind,” said the violinist. “How do you feel about chemical experiments in your kitchen?” He picked his violin back up and thrust it under his arm, the fingers of his left hand noodling soundlessly on the fingerboard, but his eyes stayed trained sharply on John.

“Well,” tried John, feeling a little lost, “all cooking is a sort of chemical experiment, isn’t it?”

The violinist smiled a little, and unbidden, John felt a bloom of warmth in his chest. He had clearly said the right thing. The question of _why_ saying the right thing in this conversation suddenly seemed so important to him was one he could think about later.

“True,” the violinist said, “although mine are less edible than most. Still, potential flatmates should know the worst of each straight away.”

“Flatmates,” said John, and out of the corner of his eye saw Mike give another little shake of his head and a laugh. So he hadn’t mentioned that bit either. This was getting… well, weird. Which is what Mike had promised. 

But interesting.

“Okay,” John continued, feeling suddenly reckless and happy. “Fine, flatmates. Yes. Well, I play the french horn, for starters, that bit can’t be helped. I sleepwalk more often than I care to admit, and I can be just as fantastically lazy as you’d expect of someone who spent eight years in a military bureaucracy. I have another set of vices once I’ve gotten settled a bit in a place, but I think those are the main ones at the moment.” He raised his eyebrows at the other man, who was loosening his bow and rubbing the rosin off his fingerboard with a kind of finality. “So that’s it then?” he said. “We’re flatmates, just like that? Can I know your name, at least?”

“Certainly,” answered the violinist, snapping his case closed. “The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address of our flat is 221B Baker Street. I will meet you here at noon tomorrow, and we’ll go together to sign for it.”

He spoke with such authority that John almost laughed at the audacity of it— but then realized that, however insane Sherlock Holmes seemed, John knew himself well enough to know already that he was going to show up. He was going to go see the flat with Sherlock, and he was probably going to end up the flatmate of this strange, already-somewhat-irritating violinist. And even though some part of him was screaming at him to listen to reason, to slow down and just get to know this guy before he committed to living with him, it was vastly overruled by the rest of him— the same way his mother’s voice of reason, telling him to just get a normal job for a few years and see what happened, had been overruled by the wild voice telling him it would be a better idea to fly halfway across the world to join a military band in a country he’d never lived in.

He was going to do it.

“Fine,” said John, “Noon exactly. Do you want to know _my_ name, by any chance?”

Something sharp glinted in Sherlock’s eyes. “No, I can find it quite easily from what I know already of you,” he said.

“And… what is it that you know of me?”

Sherlock turned, and a look flashed across his face like he was going to _eat_ John. Then it was gone, and he took a deep breath. 

“I know that you were a fantastically talented player in high school, a prodigy in the way the french horn rarely sees prodigies,” he said, advancing minutely towards John and ignoring his small gasp. “I know your family was unsupportive financially, so you leveraged your dual British-American citizenship into a position with a US army band. I can see clearly that a bad case of the yips sent your playing spiralling downwards and you decided to take your savings and return home to actually attend music school for the first time. That’s quite enough to be getting on with.”

And with that, Sherlock Holmes slung his violin case over his shoulder and strode out of the room.

He was already halfway down the hall by the time John spluttered out, “a bad case of the _what?_ ”

Mike shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, “he’s always like that.”

John fought the mad urge to follow Sherlock hown the hall. He wanted to know everything about the man now; wanted to crawl inside of his skin and look around like he had just done to John. Instead, he just put his horn case on the table and started setting up to practice, grateful that he wouldn’t have to wait in the line in the hallway. He tried to ask Mike a few more questions about Sherlock as he put his horn together, but Mike didn’t seem to know a lot. Or at least, not as much as John wanted to know about Sherlock, which was _everything/_. 

“How the hell did he know so much about me?” he asked. 

“It’s just this… trick thing he does,” Mike answered, looking way too casual for the level of adrenaline coursing through John’s veins. “He calls it ‘observation and deduction.’ He can look at you and tell things about you from the mud on your shoes or the ink on your finger or whatever. Irritating, but kind of impressive.”

John just smiled, tried to stay cool, and waited for Mike to leave before he let himself collapse into a chair, reeling. Sherlock was the single most intoxicating presence he had ever felt in his life, and the thought that he was going to see him again the next day and then _live_ with him made him feel slightly drunk. 

He finally tried to put the thing out of his mind and actually practice. His first lesson had featured a humbling array of new lip buzzing exercises, which he made his way through distractedly before allowing himself to start in on his etudes. 

It wasn’t working. It felt like his lips weren’t responding to input, like signals from his brain were intercepted somewhere in between the thought and the action. After spectacularly failing the same slur five times in a row, John set the horn aside and closed his eyes, trying to breathe deeply and calm his frustration. 

_I can see clearly that a bad case of the yips sent your playing spiralling downwards and you decided to take your savings and return home to actually attend music school for the first time. That’s quite enough to be getting on with…_

Sherlock’s voice floated through his head unbidden. John frowned, shoved the horn back on his face, and tried to keep going. 

Six cacks in ten bars later, he sighed and pulled out his phone. He might as well take a break anyway. And unlike his first time in the practice rooms, he had covered the window into the hallway with a sheet of paper, so nobody could look in to see him wasting time on his phone when he was supposed to be working. 

He typed “the yips” into google and waited for the page to load with a strange sense of butterflies in his stomach. His eye scanned down the page, reading the first result: 

_“The yips are involuntary wrist spasms that occur most commonly when golfers are trying to putt. However, the yips can also affect people who play other sports — such as cricket, darts and baseball. It was once thought that the yips were always associated with performance anxiety. However, it now appears that some people have the yips due to a neurological condition affecting specific muscles (focal dystonia).  
Changing the way you perform the affected task might help you find relief from the yips. For example, a right-handed golfer might try putting left-handed.”_

Twenty minutes of reading later, John put his horn away, left the practice room for someone else, and headed for the library. He was absorbed in reading everything he could find about the ailment that caused athletes-- and, apparently, horn players-- to suddenly lose the ability to play. God _damn_ Sherlock. How had he seen this in John when John had had no idea about it himself? 

He thought about what Mike had said-- _he’s always like that._ Well, John figured, he had better ready himself for an abundance of scrutiny into the innermost workings of his mind, because the next day he was moving in with Sherlock Holmes.


	4. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John moves into his new flat, and the new friends have a visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A soundtrack to a new home.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHu8qzmLVQ%22)
> 
> The book John is reading is an example of the relatively new genre of psychology which takes the principles of sports psychology and applies them to other careers (particularly the performing arts, but applicable to anything, really.) The book John is reading is [here](http://dongreene.com/live/shop/all-three-books/); for something more general along the same lines, I was recommended [this book](https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Stress-Peter-Hanson-M-D/dp/0988462001) by a venerable elder musician once and although it's old and shows its age in many ways, it completely turned around my approach to stress and anxiety.

It almost scared John, how easy it was to move in with Sherlock. There was a waiting list for the dorm, so although technically he had to give two months notice, Molly at the front desk gave him the phone number of a student who was happy to take over his lease immediately. He had one suitcase, which took about ten minutes to repack. He showed up on the door of 221b Baker Street feeling reckless and stupid and light as air. The street was just busy enough to feel downtown but not too noisy, the flat nestled above a mid-priced cafe and overseen by a bustling woman named Mrs. Hudson who insisted on helping John unpack and feeding him tea and biscuits as soon as he was settled. Sherlock lay on the couch across the room, his fingers steepled under his chin, and seemed to be sleeping, though every so often he would open his eyes and glance across at John and Mrs. Hudson, like he was just checking that they were really still there. 

Mrs. Hudson finally have him one last pat on the back and said “Just call down if you need anything-- just for today, mind, not all the time, I’m your landlady, not your housekeeper!” and bustled back downstairs. 

There was silence for a moment in the flat, and John breathed out a deep breath, listening to the background noise of the street and the sound of Sherlock’s even breath. He had almost expected that he would want to hide in his room as soon as he had moved in with him, but he had half an hour before he had to head back to the school-- for the second iteration of the musicology class he had first met Sherlock, coincidentally-- and he found that, now that he was here, he didn’t want to leave the sitting room. He picked up his book, one recommended to him by Mike, some sort of sports-psychology-for-musicians thing that John hadn’t even know was a genre. After a brief survey of the room and the available furniture, he settled in the chair opposite the sofa. 

Sherlock opened his eyes again, turning his head slightly to look at John. The early-afternoon light fell over the right side of his face, throwing his sharp profile into relief and casting the shadows of his eyelashes over his cheeks. He was striking, and John found himself not opening the book on his lap. 

“Where did all this furniture come from, then?” John asked, gesturing around the room, which was really quite full. “Is all this yours?”

Sherlock just hummed, not quite an affirmative. “Unimportant,” he said. He returned his head to neutral and closed his eyes. 

John decided not to press the point. It was nice furniture, after all, and the room was comfortably if somewhat eccentrically decorated. Beat the hell out of a dormitory. He set an alarm, not trusting himself to notice when he needed to leave for class, and settled in to try to absorb the wisdom of one Don Greene, navy SEAL turned performance psychologist. 

He couldn’t concentrate. He read the sentence, _This will not make those symptoms go away, but it will help you to use the energy in a far more productive way_ over and over again. Sherlock shifted slightly, still staring up at the ceiling. _These will not make those symptoms go away…_ Sherlock’s eyes were blue-green and framed by wide eyebrows. _... those symptoms go away, but it will help you to use the energy..._ He was so excessively lean as to look stretched-out, like there was only enough of him for a shorter man, but a humorous creator had insisted on a tall one instead. _it will help you use the energy in a far more productive way…_ Fuck it. John threw aside the book and resigned himself to just sitting there looking at Sherlock. Sherlock had done plenty of looking at John, after all, or at the very least he had packed more looking into a few short moments than most people could accomplish in an hour. 

When his timer went off, John was startled. He hadn’t fallen asleep, exactly, just drifted into some sort of meditative fugue state, his eyes still roaming over Sherlock’s thin frame and sharp face. 

And, well, he wasn’t on an army base in Oklahoma any more. Perhaps here, he could admit at least to himself that his new flatmate was very _pretty._

John shook his head and roused himself from the chair. “We’ve got to get going,” he said.

Sherlock didn’t move a muscle. “To where?” 

“Class, Sherlock. We have class together, remember?” John hadn’t mentioned the incident in the back of the musicology classroom before, but it seemed impossible that Sherlock hadn’t recognized him from the day before the moment they were introduced. 

“Boring.”

John felt his eyebrows raising of their own volition. “Well, yes, it was,” he admitted. “Rather the point of the academic classes, though, isn’t it? Bore you enough to make you feel grateful for the hours you spend practicing? Come on, we’re going to be late.”

“Not going.”

John stood in the doorway for a moment, considering. Sherlock had put his long fingers back under his chin, and closed his eyes as if he wasn’t aware John was in the room at all. But he radiated a tension that he hadn’t before, a coiled-up wire, waiting to see what John’s next move was going to be. 

John knew he probably shouldn’t play along. He should just go to class, and leave his new flatmate lying on the couch-- Sherlock was a first-year, sure, but he was still an adult, and it wasn’t up to John to make him go to class. 

Well, that was what he _should_ do. Instead he strode across the room towards the sofa. “Yes you are,” he said. “It’s your second day of class, _ever_ , and you’re a first-year student. You’re supposed to be naively enthusiastic, and I’m the one who gets to be all bored and jaded. Come on.” Without thinking, he reached for both of Sherlock’s hands to tug him up off the couch.

He heard a gasp as he pulled gently. Then, to his surprise, Sherlock was on his feet with no resistance at all, staring at him with the same sudden bright ferocity that he had back in class, and gripping his hands with a strength that seemed impossible for his long, bony fingers.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” said John, trying to let go of Sherlock’s hands and reach for his coat.

Sherlock’s grip tightened painfully, and John found himself pinned, unable to move away from the grip on his wrists or the intensity of Sherlock’s eyes. John shrank a little bit under the force of it, staring at the floor, his mind whirling. Sherlock either looked furious, or-- something. God, he had gone and fucked it up already, his one nascent and bizarre little friendship, and he had ruined it by insisting a little too aggressively that Sherlock go to class. Physical contact had been so normal in the army band— slapping your buddy on the back, jostling your neighbour on parade, roughing each other up in jest or to let off some steam— he had nearly forgotten that not everyone operated like that.

He raised his eyes to Sherlock’s and steeled himself to apologize, still trying to tug his wrists free from Sherlock’s grip.

Sherlock’s face brought him up short. He wasn’t angry; he was _fascinated._ He looked like a light bulb had turned on inside his head. Or maybe an electrical storm; he seemed to have short-circuited, frozen in place with his eyes wide and full lips slightly parted.

“You can let go now,” John tried, gently.

There was a pause, then Sherlock murmured “Yes,” and did so, placing John’s arms back at his sides like they would fall to the floor if he didn’t put them back in their proper place. 

“Come on, then,” John said, tugging on his jacket, and this time Sherlock followed suit. 

Just as John was about to slip his new keys into his pocket and descend the stairs, though, Sherlock glanced sharply out the window. He held up a hand to John. “We have a visitor,” he said.

John frowned. “How? Nobody even knows we live here.”

Sherlock just linked his hands behind his back, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he listened to the footsteps ascending the stairs. 

The man who entered was probably in his late forties, greying in a graceful, unpretentious kind of way. John glanced out the window to see a police car, scene lights flashing gaudily, parked outside the house. He had a sudden flash of fear. God, he really didn’t know anything about Sherlock. It didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that he was tangled up in something illegal. What if John had just made a huge mistake by moving in with him?

The man’s eyes alighted immediately on Sherlock, but it was Sherlock who spoke first: “Lestrade. Thank God, John was about to make me go to class.”

The man-- Lestrade, apparently-- glanced around the room at John’s name, and absorbed the fact that Sherlock had company with undisguised surprise. He obviously decided not to comment in favour of turning back to Sherlock. “And was this class under the tutlage of one Evan Drebber, by any chance?”

Sherlock went very still, although his eyes glanced over at John before he answered. “As much as I wish I had deleted that particular piece of information, I am forced to recall that yes, it was.”

Lestrade grinned a little, although it was fairly humourless. “This one’s right up your alley in two different ways, then,” he said. “No point in going to class now. Evan Drebber is dead.”


	5. R-A-C-H-E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A snippet of Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet, where the DSCH theme Sherlock references features prominently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wokx576v5Y0 Also, the 1st violinist in this performance just made me slide a lil bit higher on the Kinsey scale :P

The minute D.I Lestrade (which he was; John had demanded to see his badge, which he had produced cheerfully with a muttered “yeah, I’d be sceptical too, to be honest”) was gone, Sherlock was transformed. Gone was the lethargy of the Sherlock that John had been about to drag to class. He actually jumped and pumped his fists in the air, looking like it was Christmas come early. 

“Evan Drebber, musicologist, failed conductor,” he said, pacing around the room at high speed, “found dead in his apartment by a Deliveroo courier. Door left open; wrist slit, but blood loss not primary cause of death. No suspects, unless you think the Deliveroo boy killed him as an expression of vengeance on the gig economy. Brilliant. Come on, Lestrade called a cab for us.”

The rapid-fire words seemed to penetrate John’s brain very slowly, through a haze of confusion and adrenaline. “Sorry-- _us_?”

“I need an assistant. Anderson won’t work with me. You’re not as stupid as some of the others.”

“‘Ta,” was all John could think of to say. 

It was mid-day and the cab crawled through the traffic of central London. Sherlock stared out the window. His steady gaze seemed to belie his true mental state, because John was sitting close enough that he could feel the man practically vibrating. 

“So,” said John, “How did you know that I was in an American army band, then?”

“The same way I’m shortly going to know far more than the Met about the circumstances of Evan Drebber’s death,” answered Sherlock. “I observed.”

John could see his face, lit by the afternoon sun, betraying a slight smile. “Meaning?” he prompted. 

“When you entered my practice room, you were holding your horn case and mute; a Bonna case and Balu mute. Extravagant purchases for a first-year student, and probably out of the budget range of someone who re-soles mid-price shoes instead of buying new ones. So, purchased for you. Either by a wealthy family-- unlikely given the rest of your wardrobe and bearing-- or by an organization. Your right thumb, then, states clearly where you had been: America. Older student returning from a long period of playing in America, in possession of instrument accessories far beyond his budget-- not a difficult leap that they had been provided by a former employer.”

John held up his right hand. On the left side of the interphalangeal joint of his thumb, there was a large raised callus, stained slightly green from the metal of his horn, where the entire weight of the instrument rested when he played. 

Sherlock glanced at it. “A peculiarly new-world affectation, to choose the playing position that causes you the most pain and disfigurement,” he observed.

“It allows for the best sound,” said John, a little defensively. “So that’s how you knew. My horn case and my shoes and my thumb.”

“As I said,” said Sherlock. “Observation.” There was something nervous in the way he glanced at John sideways to gauge his reaction.

“That’s brilliant,” said John, because it was. 

“Meretricious,” said Sherlock, but he was obviously pleased. “Brilliant is what happens next. Driver, just stop here, please.” 

They were at the beginning of a block, and down at the other end John could see a tangle of police tape and flashing lights. Sherlock didn’t try to pay the driver and the man shook his head when John started digging in his pocket for his wallet, jerking his head towards the police tape to indicate that he was paid by the force directly. 

John stepped out of the cab and looked around, then hurried to catch up when he realized Sherlock had already started walking briskly towards the apartment block surrounded by police. He obviously was no longer in the mood for talk, though; he seemed to be alternately fascinated and irritated by every aspect of the sidewalk and the surrounding bushes, cars, and fences. 

They were greeted at the entrance to the complex by a dark-skinned and frizzy-haired woman to whom Sherlock reacted with a physical recoiling that reminded John of nothing so much as a cat with its fur on end. She seemed to have more or less the same reaction to him, greeting him with a curt nod and and an appraising look at John. She stepped into an elevator and motioned for them to follow. “Found yourself a pet who can stand you for a while, then?” She said offhandedly to Sherlock. 

John could basically feel Sherlock radiating pent-up rage. His eyes were sweeping over the woman, and as he took a breath to retort John suddenly decided he could probably do better. 

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” he said quietly, calmly.

Her eyes and Sherlock’s both snapped to him. He kept his hands linked loosely behind his back, staring up at the numbers on the elevator panel inching upwards. 

The woman was looking at him skeptically, and when he glanced over, he saw a look of pure shock pass over Sherlock’s face. John felt a painful squeeze in his chest. His new flatmate was somewhat insufferable, and clearly others felt the same way, but it suddenly occurred to him that Sherlock didn’t seem used to being defended. 

Lestrade was waiting in the hall when the elevator doors dinged open, and took in John’s continued presence without comment. “Thanks, Sally,” he said, and she pressed the down button in the elevator with a muttered “Have fun with the freak, then. Better you than me.”

John cast her a venomous look before the doors closed fully. 

Sherlock seemed to have already forgotten about her entirely, sweeping through the door that Lestrade had pushed open for him. Lestrade was still standing in front of it, waiting for John to enter, and John suddenly realized fully what he had been putting off thinking about for the entire cab ride, which was that he was about to see a dead body. His heart started racing. Not just any dead body, but the dead body of a professor who two days ago had been lecturing in front of a class of first-year music students. _Okay then. Pull yourself together._ He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and entered. 

The room was exactly what John would have expected from a musicology professor: grand piano in the corner, bookshelves of scores, even a comically stereotypical bust of Beethoven on a ledge. The room’s owner was lying, face down and arms splayed, on the plush carpet beside the piano. John stared at it, and was relieved that he felt no queasiness or even discomfort at the sight. He had never seen anything of the sort before, of course, and had had no idea how he was going to react. Apparently he was all good with dead bodies, though. That was good to know.

It was especially good to know if he was going to continue living with Sherlock Holmes, who apparently did this sort of thing often. 

Sherlock was down on the floor, lying practically flush with the dead body and staring horizontally across the carpet. That _did_ creep John out a little, so he looked at Lestrade instead. 

“So he… helps you?” he said. “Some sort of consultant?”

Lestrade nodded. “Consultant is exactly the word,” he said. 

“And, uh…” John paused. There wasn’t exactly a delicate way to put this, so he just ploughed ahead. “Why does the Metropolitan Police Force consult with violin students?”

Lestrade shrugged, seeming exasperated but not defensive. “Look, I told him if he applied to the Met, I’d make sure he was placed somewhere where he was used appropriately. Tosser decided he wanted to learn to play the violin instead.”

The tosser in question was on all fours, examining the rug, and seemed to hear the conversation around him for the first time. “I recall you promising specifically that I would end up as _your_ subordinate,” he said. “And I already know how to play the violin.”

“Well there’s nobody else in the force who’d put up with you, is there?” retorted Lestrade, although not unkindly. “And in case you need a reminder— you _are_ my subordinate, right now. I’m letting you in on this case and I’m in charge of you. If you’d joined up, you at least would have gotten your own desk.”

“Don’t want a desk,” said Sherlock. “Did any of yours step here?”

Lestrade regarded the seemingly random spot of carpet that Sherlock was indicating. “Don’t know,” he admitted.

Sherlock gave an almost gutteral growl and jumped to his feet. “And do you know if one of yours dropped their wedding ring in the middle of the crime scene?”

John and Lestrade both leaned in. Sure enough, Sherlock was holding up a plain gold wedding band; rather thin, probably sized for a woman’s hand. 

Lestrade’s eyebrows raised. “I should think not. I don’t let mine wear metal bands to work. You ever seen pictures of a ring degloving?”

John winced; he had, in fact, seen pictures of a ring degloving. Sherlock just smirked. Lestrade held out an evidence bag, which Sherlock took and dropped the ring into-- before slipping it into his own pocket. 

“Sherlock!” Lestrade snapped. “This is _evidence._ It comes with me.” 

Sherlock shuffled his feet, obviously stalling, as an expression of pure frustration made its way across his face. “I need it,” he said. 

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “More than you need to not be in prison for theft?”

Sherlock’s fists balled, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to thicken. John felt suddenly like he was intruding; they’d obviously had this conversation, or variants of it, many times before. He had a sudden flash of sympathy for D.I. Lestrade, which receded the moment he realized it was probably exactly what Lestrade now felt for him. 

He glanced over at the table, where several clear plastic bags of evidence were stored. There were the wallet and keys of the dead man, as well as a book and what seems to be a loose leaf of staff paper. John peered through the filmy plastic to read the title of the book: Boccacio’s _Decameron._ The music on the staff paper was more difficult to make out; as far as he could see, it was just five tones, written out as whole tones. 

“What’s this?” he asked, interrupting Sherlock and Lestrade’s bickering.  
Lestrade seemed grateful for the interruption, and took advantage to quickly yank the bag out of Sherlock’s hand as he was momentarily distracted. Before Sherlock could protest, he said, “It’s what I was _going_ to show you, if you could behave for a moment.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but followed Lestrade to the table. Lestrade snapped on a pair of gloves, and tossed a pair to Sherlock-- and to John, who caught them and pulled them on with more than a little surprise. Why he was suddenly trusted to handle evidence at active crime scenes just for being Sherlock Holmes’ flatmate, he had no idea. 

“Book,” said Lestrade. “Weird thing to carry around. Remember reading it in school because a teacher said it had some filth in it. Have to say I was rather disappointed.” He pulled out the sheet of paper. “And… this.”

Sherlock’s eyes fixed on the paper as he held it out. It was a regular sheet of staff paper, with only one line used. It had nothing written on it save for five seemingly random whole notes, rather messily drawn.

[](https://imgbb.com/)

Lestrade peered over Sherlock’s shoulder at it. “Don’t remember much from high school band,” he commented. But why’s it got the natural sign on that one note, when it’s not got a key signature in the first place?”

Sherlock smiled a little. “John?”

John sucked in a breath, looking at the paper. “You, ah, want me to guess?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I do not want you to guess. I want you to deduce. Let us assume this sequence of notes is intended to be in the treble clef, and let us further assume, given its lack of musical merit, that this was written as a message. Why is there is natural sign only on the B?” 

John felt his heart racing. God, why did he even care? He didn’t want Sherlock to think he was stupid-- but _why?_ Surely Sherlock thought everyone was stupid, so why did it matter?

B. A B natural, not a B-flat. No other note required that distinction-- were they assumed to have flats or sharps on them? No, that didn’t make any sense. All of the notes were assumed to be natural, except the B, which required the special distinction. Suddenly a tune popped into his head, a Bach fugue that his dad used to put on on the record player in the living room, and—

“It’s an H,” said John triumphantly, “It represents the letter H.” Sherlock beamed, and muttered in Lestrade’s direction, “German musical notation-- the letter B was used to indicate a B-flat, and the letter H to indicate B-natural. Immortalized in the musical signatures of Johann Sebastian Bach-- B-A-C-H, obviously-- and Dmitri Shostakovich-- D-S-C-H-- where the S came from the German _Es_ , or E-flat.” Lestrade nodded, although he looked a little lost. He seemed pretty comfortable with his role at this point, though, and said, “So the message?”

Sherlock beamed in John’s direction and held out the paper for him. “D, A, C, H, E,” said John. He frowned. “What does that mean?”

Sherlock took the paper back. “Close,” he said. “Very close, John, good.” John felt for a second like he should be insulted by the patronizing tone, but he was too caught up in his curiosity to care. “Dache doesn’t mean anything,” Sherlock continued. “Swap out the first letter for French fixed-do nomenclature, though, and you get?”

“D is Re,” said John. “Rache? What’s that, then?”

Sherlock drew himself up to his full height, swirling his coat around himself dramatically. He handed the paper back to Lestrade. “Bring us an exact replica of the ring by tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll be waiting. Come on, John.” And he started striding towards the door. John followed, casting an apologetic glance at the D.I.

“Sherlock,” Lestrade exclaimed, “What the hell does this mean?”

“Revenge!” Sherlock shouted, already careening down the stairs. “R-A-C-H-E is for revenge!”


	6. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John discovers something about Sherlock. Something... else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Beethoven trio John was playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHMdQYkoWqo And a peek into the challenges of it, if ya really want to geek out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBgCjqaHpDg

“That was amazing.”

“Mmm.”

“No really, that was… just amazing.” John stared out of the taxi window, watching the afternoon pass by, feeling almost that if he were to turn his head to look at Sherlock sitting beside him, the man might be burning so bright as to leave a permanent impression in John’s eyes, like he had stared at the sun. 

“Do you realize you do that out loud?”

“Compliment you?” John huffed out a little laugh. “Yes. You’re actually supposed to do it out loud, because the other person can’t hear you if you only do it in your head.” He finally forced himself to look at his flatmate. “Why, do you mind it?”

Sherlock didn’t look smug. He actually looked… surprised. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t mind it.”

John insisted on taking the Tube to school as soon as they got home. Sherlock had protested that he could practice at home, and for a moment seemed genuinely irritated that John planned on leaving the flat without him, but the truth was John needed some time to think, at it was becoming increasingly clear that thinking about anything other than Sherlock Holmes while Sherlock was in his immediate presence was something of an impossibility. 

Admittedly, he was still probably going to end up thinking about Sherlock Holmes quite a bit. 

The entire school was, predictably, aflame with the news of a professor’s death. Drebber had been relatively new to the school and not all that well-liked, so the news had all of the frisson of scandal with relatively little of the awkwardness of tragedy. As John waited for a practice room, he overheard no fewer than five very confidently expressed interpretations of Drebber’s death, ranging from accidental overdose to car crash. 

John just smiled, scrolling through the news on his phone and listening to the other students speculate. Part of him wanted to jump in and share what he knew, but the bigger part felt like he had a fascinating secret glowing in the centre of his chest, and he wanted to keep it for himself. 

He was distracted, admittedly, as he started his lip-buzzing exercises. He felt like his entire _self_ was buzzing, like Sherlock had awakened something mad and wonderful inside him and he couldn’t put it away. He let himself be distracted, figuring that even half-hearted practice was better than nothing. 

He mentally scanned around his new flat as he played scales, trying to recall every bizarre and wonderful detail of the things Sherlock surrounded himself with. A pair of antlers on the wall; skull on the mantelpiece; knife affixing the mail to the wood of the table; a chemistry set in the kitchen. He played his favourite etude, as written and then transposed into three different keys, as he took stock of every expression he had seen on Sherlock’s face so far: the statuesque repose of his reclining on the couch, the shock and intrigue when John had touched his hands, the ferocious glee at Lestrade’s explanation of Drebber’s death, the single-minded focus of his examination of the crime scene. 

By the time he had moved on to practicing excerpts-- on today’s docket, the trio from Beethoven’s Third-- his mind was rhapsodizing on Sherlock’s body. The slight curve of his hips hugged by well-tailored trousers. His long fingers, God, had there ever been any hands more perfectly suited to a violin-player? His full lips, slightly parted in surprise when John actually managed to say or do something unexpected. 

He was so lost in thought that he barely even heard the knock on his practice room door before it opened hesitantly and a pale, mousy face peeked in. It took a moment for John to place her, so he plastered a pleasant smile on his face until his mind caught up and he realized it was Molly, the girl who worked at the front desk at the dorm. 

“Hello!” She said. “I’m sorry to interrupt!”

John rubbed at his face, feeling fuzzy, like he’d been dreaming instead of practicing. Well, he kind of had. “Quite alright,” he said. “I probably needed to take a break.”

“I was just hearing your Beethoven as I walked past,” said Molly “and was wondering if you’d been snapped up for chamber music yet? I’m an oboist, and I’d love to have you in my woodwind quintet.”

“I-- wow.” John reeled. Molly was a third-year, and she was asking _him_ to play chamber music with her? _Why_ He could barely even play any more. He had probably sounded… John cast his mind over the last few minutes of practice. Actually, his playing had felt pretty good. He hadn’t noticed, because part of his mind was obsessing over Sherlock. But his lips had felt more elastic than they had in months, years maybe. He called to find the feel of the swift articulation in the Beethoven he had just been practicing-- it had rolled out of him without conscious thought, light and precise. Despite the adrenaline still coursing through his body and his complete inability to concentrate on his playing, something had actually gone _well_ today, and Molly had heard it. 

Suddenly, the first article he had read on the yips popped into his head. _Changing the way you perform the affected task might help you find relief from the yips. For example, a right-handed golfer might try putting left-handed._

Well, damn. 

Apparently solving crimes with Sherlock Holmes was going to be good for his horn playing. 

He realized Molly was still staring at him, waiting for an answer. “Uh-- yeah, I mean no, I don’t have anyone to play with yet,” he stammered. “I’ll have to check my schedule, but, uh-- I’d love to, I’ll get back to you, okay?”

She nodded kindly. “It’s no rush,” she said. “The first few weeks are stressful. Lots to do!” 

John nodded in agreement, trying to resist bursting into laughter. She was right, of course, although not for the reasons she thought. 

“Well, I won’t keep you,” Molly continued. “Sounds great. See you around!” She gave a tight, nervous sort of wave, and left the room. 

John grinned, savouring the moment. _Someone wants to play chamber music with me!_

Then, his phone dinged. 

_Come home now if you can._

Okay then. 

_If you can’t, come anyway._

Al thoughts of Molly, chamber music, or even the horn forgotten, John packed up and caught the next train home. The buzz in his stomach had turned into a roar, the excitement of the day and the excitement that was purely Sherlock. 

When he got into the flat, Sherlock was lying on the couch, fingers steepled under his chin. 

“What is it, then?”

“I need to you post a Craigslist ad,” said Sherlock. 

John noticed that Sherlock’s laptop was open on the table, just a few feet away from him. “You couldn’t post it yourself?”

“Of course I could,” said Sherlock. “But you’re going to. The text will read: ‘Found: women’s wedding ring, on the pavement at Lauriston and Brixton.’ Then put your phone number.”

John didn’t bother arguing, just spent a few minutes typing out and posting the ad, then sunk down into what he had already started thinking of as his chair. “So, should I expect you to be summoning me home from school to perform menial tasks often, then?” He tried to make it sound as scathing as possible, but it didn’t quite come out that way. It was hard to classify a task as “menial” when it was for the purposes of catching a murderer. 

“Probably,” said Sherlock.

John thought about that, and thought about the amazing practice session he had just had, for the first time in months, apparently thanks to Sherlock. He shrugged. “Okay,” he admitted. Being called home to Sherlock… honestly didn’t sound too bad. 

Sherlock glanced at him, disguising the surprise on his face not quite quickly enough. “And sometimes just because I’m bored,” he said, trying his luck.

“I’ve only been living here a day,” John laughed a little. “How did you keep yourself occupied before then?”

“Cocaine,” said Sherlock simply. “Narcotics, when I am in the opposite mood. If your mind is ever in need of chemical adjustment, the necessary supplies are in the box on the mantelpiece.” 

John felt like he’d been electrocuted. His eyes snapped over to the mantel above the fireplace; sure enough, there was a plain wooden box on the right-hand corner. For a moment he couldn’t speak, and then managed to spit out, “What. Did you just say.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “I said: cocaine. Narcotics, when I’m—“

“I heard you the first time,” John growled, jumping to his feet. It made him feel dizzy. Of course. Of fucking _course,_ he should have seen it sooner. He should have seen it right away. He wanted to punch Sherlock. God, he could. He could almost feel his knuckles coming into violent contact with those delicate cheekbones, feel the crunch of teeth and the clamminess of skin— no. He needed to get out of the room. With an effort like the first step of a marathon, he forced himself towards the stairs. 

Sherlock rocketed upright. “John?” He said. Eyes wide. Innocent. Like he hadn’t just admitted to using illegal drugs, to keeping illegal drugs on the mantel in full view of a fucking police officer, to— and what had he done, exactly?

John whirled around, grateful for the new space in between them. “When did you do it?” He asked, voice low. “Do you keep another’s stash in your bedroom? In the bathroom? Is that why Lestrade always has to send a car for you— so you can shoot up beforehand, get high and good and ready for a spot of fun with dead bodies courtesy of the Metropolitan police force?”

Sherlock’s eyes had gone wide and frightened, and he was shaking his head vigorously, but John ploughed ahead. “I should have known,” he spat. “That shit you do. Your deducing, running around, smelling things, tasting things, knowing things. Should have known it wasn’t really you. It’s just the coke. Jesus. Does Lestrade know? Does he know he’s engaging the services of a—“

Sherlock’s hands slammed into his shoulders. John wasn’t ready for it and he stumbled backwards, his back hitting the railing of the stairs painfully and then coming to rest against the wall. Sherlock held him there, his hands not straying from John’s shoulders, but they had no strength in them. Sherlock was shaking, his hands feeling like they were vibrating against John’s body, and when John forced his eyes to Sherlock’s through a haze of pain and surprise, he was suddenly looking at, very possibly, the most undisguised terror he had ever seen on a human face. 

John took a deep breath, trying to clear his head before he spoke again. His fists were still itching to make violent contact with Sherlock’s face, and despite the fact that now Sherlock would technically have started it, John was pretty sure he would himself come out on top in a fight between them, and he really didn’t want to do that. Not on their first day of living together. Not with Sherlock. 

“You’ve got it wrong,” Sherlock panted before John could get himself together to say anything. “You’ve got it backwards. I don’t use when I have a case. Never. I swear to you.” 

His voice was shaking, and it was pretty clear to John that he was telling the truth. John’s mind felt like it had a hurricane blowing through it. “Then why?” He said. 

Sherlock shook his head. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He was, for the first time since John had met him, truly at a loss. “I can’t…” he murmured. “I don’t know how to say it.”

John felt all the anger drain out of him at once. Sherlock looked so lost, so lost and sad and very, very sorry. Every bone in John’s body was aching from the excitement of the day, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be sitting down. 

He sighed, reached up and removed Sherlock’s hands from his shoulders. Sherlock started at them like he had forgotten where he had put them until he got them back, and he made no protest when John tentatively put an arm around him and led him to the couch. 

John sat them down side by side, and Sherlock slumped his head forwards into his hands. John leaned back against the cushions, rubbing his face. The moment stretched until he could hear the sound of both of their breathing, slowly calming. 

“Okay,” said John carefully. “This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to give a recap of sorts. Of everything I currently know about Sherlock Holmes. And you’re going to correct me if I’ve got any of it wrong, and then you’re going to fill in anything I might have missed. Can you do that for me?”

Sherlock nodded minutely. 

John took a deep breath. “So. Sherlock Holmes. Genius. Main area of interest, detection and criminology. Secondary area of interest, violin. Been solving crimes as a consultant for the police since age thirteen, Lestrade said. Impressive.” Even at that mild compliment, he noticed Sherlock’s spine straighten a little and his shoulders relax. He continued, but less authoritatively, sounding out his thoughts as he vocalized them. “Also a music student at the royal college of music, because apparently being a genius at one thing isn’t enough for him.” As soon as he said it, John regretted the sarcastic tone, because he suddenly realized that it was _true._ Possibly the truest thing he has said so far.

“It must be loud, in there,” he said slowly. He could see for himself what Sherlock’s mind could do given data. What must it do when it was removed from it? “God, you must need constant—“ he shook his head, unable to find a word for just what it was that Sherlock needed. “Anyway, that’s why you enrolled in music school, isn’t it? Just the detective work, it wouldn’t be enough. Lestrade comes ’round, what? A couple times a month?”

Sherlock’s head was still in his hands, not looking at John. But he gave a little shrug, and muttered, “about that often. Sometimes I have private clients.”

“Not often enough, though,” said John, and Sherlock didn’t contradict him. “So to pass the time, you play violin. And when even that can’t provide enough input to keep your mind from overheating from its own manic pace…”

“I adjust the dials manually,” Sherlock supplied. 

John let out a long sigh. He felt utterly spent, and completely incapable of moralizing at Sherlock about the dangers of recreational drugs. Not now. 

Instead, he carefully moved his hand up to come to rest on Sherlock’s back. He rested it there a moment, intending it to have just been a reassuring pat— but then Sherlock arched into his touch, ever so slightly, and he found he couldn’t pull his hand away. Instead, he started rubbing small circles into Sherlock’s back. And Sherlock _let_ him. 

It felt like a very long time later that Sherlock said, “Tell me again that I’m amazing.”

John was startled out of his reverie, the skin on his palm having gone a little tingly from the slide of his hand against Sherlock’s shirt. He almost let a startled _”what?”_ escape his lips, but bit it back just in time. That wasn’t a request Sherlock would enjoy having to repeat. 

“You’re amazing,” said John. He was rewarded by the feel of a contented sigh passing through Sherlock’s lungs, his ribcage softening under John’s fingers. 

“And vain,” he added, and leaned forward a bit to see a small hint of a smile play on Sherlock’s lips. 

Then, to his utter shock, Sherlock leaned back, placed his head on John’s shoulder, and closed his eyes. 

He didn’t dare move, but with Sherlock’s eyes closed, he turned his head and _looked._ Sherlock’s curls brushed his nose, smelling of sandalwood and smoke, and his long eyelashes rested on his cheek. All of the tension seemed to have bled out of his face. And god, he was even more gorgeous when he was relaxed. 

Carefully, John slid a little further forward on the couch. It suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world not to disturb the insane, brilliant, vulnerable violinist settled on his shoulder. John settled in, allowed his cheek to press into the side of Sherlock’s head, and closed his eyes.


	7. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has an assignment for John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To hear John’s warmup, and to some noises you probably had no idea a human mouth could make, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z9izjmCmkI

When John woke, he was slumped sideways on the couch, alone. The sun was blazing through the window of the sitting room, and he had the worst crick in his neck he’d ever felt. 

“Ugh,” he muttered, trying to push himself up and come to his senses fully. He remembered fighting with Sherlock. Because-- because Sherlock was a junky. Right. Shit. Then, with a start, the conclusion of the evening came rushing back, and he looked around wildly. He and Sherlock had fallen asleep on the couch nestled in each other’s arms. 

Oh. _Oh._ Okay then. 

Suddenly fully awake, he looked around the flat. Sherlock was gone, the door to his room open and his coat absent from its hook. John picked up his phone from where he’d left it on the table the night before. The battery was nearly dead, and the time showed 10:17. He must have been excruciatingly tired, both to have slept for so long and not to have noticed Sherlock extracting himself from the couch and leaving the flat. 

He had his first orchestra rehearsal at 5:30, but other than that his day was free. Academic classes had mostly been cancelled for the rest of the week in light of Drebber’s death. 

He briefly considered going to the school, but decided against it. After all, Mrs. Hudson had said that she didn’t mind either of them practicing in the flat; John wasn’t entirely sure whether she was aware of just how loud a french horn was, but there was no time like the present to find out. And he wanted to be there when Sherlock came back. He wanted to… talk to him. Or something.

If John was being honest, he had no idea what he wanted to do with the Sherlock situation. Sherlock was fascinating, and dangerous, and irritating. He was also startlingly childlike, and John had no idea how to read him. It was terrifying to contemplate the fact that after one instance of Sherlock falling asleep in his arms, John was very comfortable with the idea of doing that every night for the rest of his life. 

He shook his head and started boiling water for tea. Sherlock would come back, and most likely would have an update on the case, and they could figure out the other stuff… later. 

He’d intended to go grocery shopping, but had only gotten as far as making a list when DI Lestrade had showed up, so the shelves were mostly bare. There was a loaf of bread, which John had witnessed Sherlock eat all of two slices of, and he munched on a piece of dry toast while he waited for the water to boil. 

John was restless. He didn’t want to leave the flat, but he had to do something, so tea in hand, he headed back into the sitting room.

Having just woken up, the muscles in his face were stiff and his lips felt like they were twice their normal size. He started in on his lip-buzzing exercises, carefully working through his range in semi-tones with no mouthpiece until the stiff feeling in his face started to subside. 

He took the opportunity to look around the room, the first time he had been in it without Sherlock there. The mantel above the fireplace was crowded with papers and books, as well as a large pile of mail than was held in place with a long, sharp knife. His eyes skittered and avoided the small wooden case at left edge of the shelf. He knew what was in it, he told himself, there was no need to look. He was struck with the urge to look anyway, and then flush it all down the toilet-- but no. Sherlock would obviously just procure more of whatever was in there, and John didn’t need another row over it. He would just have to-- find something else, when he suspected Sherlock was going to use. Distract him, somehow. The futility of trying to distract Sherlock Holmes seemed overwhelming, and instead of contemplating it, he fetched his mouthpiece from the horn case and started the same buzzing exercises using the mouthpiece. 

He drifted back to the couch and picked up his phone with his right hand while he held the mouthpiece to his face with his left. He found himself opening his text messages, staring at the conversation thread with Sherlock, which ended with _Come home now if you can. If you can’t, come anyway._ Then he absentmindedly clicked back into his messages, and noticed a conversation with a number he didn’t recognize. 

_Hi, saw your ad about my ring! I’ve been so worried about it! When can I come get it?_

Then the text back sent from his own number-- Sherlock, clearly, time-stamped 7:16 AM: 

_actually just on my way to uni, can i come meet you sometime today? got a break in my classes at 9:30_

John smiled. Sherlock never texted with anything less than impeccable grammar and punctuation. He was playing a character. John wondered how far he went into it. Did he have a backstory? A costume? 

_OK. Where?_

_I’ll call u_

John checked his outgoing calls, and sure enough Sherlock had called the mysterious number shortly after. 

He put the phone down and put the mouthpiece on the horn, running those same half-step exercises through the entire range of the instrument. When he concentrated on hitting each note perfectly, he invariably missed or wobbled; but when he relaxed an allowed his mind to wander, they seemed to pop out like bubbles from his bell, perfectly formed and floating away into oblivion. 

He tried to put together all of the facts from the case so far in his mind. Evan Drebber was dead. John had looked him up; he’d been a recent transplant from America, only teaching at the RCM for a year. He’d been killed by some sort of poison, he’d overheard Lestrade ordering lab reports on the stuff. Left by him was a note spelling out the German word for “revenge” in musical notation and a woman’s wedding ring; the latter of which Sherlock had procured a reproduction and posted an ad for it on Craigslist. Now someone had answered the ad, and-- well, that person might well be the killer. 

Meaning that Sherlock had woken up before John, used John’s phone to communicate with a _murder suspect_ , and then gone to meet said suspect. Alone. 

A sudden bolt of fear shot through him. He brought the horn down with shaking hands, and tried to reason with himself. Sherlock would be okay. He had been doing this for God knows how long without John, after all, surely he knew what he was doing. Maybe he had brought Lestrade with him-- but no, John didn’t really believe that. 

He glanced out the window, hoping to see Sherlock striding up the walk, and realized he was going to need a better distraction than that to wait for his return. He pulled out the music for rehearsal that afternoon-- Schubert’s unfinished symphony-- and started trying to run through his part. 

He was busy cacking like a middle schooler when Sherlock burst through the door. He was wearing jeans and a hoodie, curls falling uncombed around his eyes, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He looked for all the world like a normal university student who just happened to have found a ring on the sidewalk. 

John dropped the horn on the couch immediately. “Thank fuck,” he breathed. “Where the bloody hell were you?”

Sherlock was incandescent. His eyes shone like light bulbs, like tiny suns casting right into John’s soul. “We almost have him,” he announced, ignoring John’s question. “We’ll have him by the day after tomorrow, I swear it. John, are you good with women?”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“Women. Flirting. Drawing them out. Getting them to talk.” 

John squeezed his eyes shut and tried to figure out how to answer the question in a way that was both accurate and would hopefully tempt Sherlock to let on what the fuck he was talking about. “I’m, uh. Decently good at talking to people. Of which category women are a subset. Recalling that fact is actually usually the key to talking to them successfully, actually, is what most men seem to forget.” 

“Good,” said Sherlock. “You have a date tonight. You’re to find out everything you can about her.” He was already sitting down at the table and opening his laptop, completely focused on… something that wasn’t the utterly insane instruction he had just issued to John. 

John strode across the room and snapped Sherlock’s laptop closed. “ _What?_ ” he said. 

Sherlock met his eyes, his face a little too open and innocent to be entirely honest. “A date, John. I know you like them. Women, that is.”

John pursed his lips. “Not even gonna ask how you came by that particular deduction. That’s not the point. Who am I going on a date with, and why, and what exactly made you assume I would agree to it?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Of course you’ll agree,” he said. “You’re desperate for excitement, and you’ll do anything I say.”

“Will I, now.”

Sherlock didn’t answer. He just opened his laptop again, and John saw him opening a crowded text editor document and start typing. He resisted the urge to read over his shoulder, because he really needed to concentrate on what Sherlock had just said to him. _You’ll do anything I say._ Of all the selfish, entitled, frankly _idiotic_ sentiments. John most certainly would not do anything Sherlock said, and was opening his mouth to tell him so, when he realized that then he would be committed to refusing to do whatever the fuck he was supposed to be doing tonight. 

And… he did want to go on this date. Because interacting with another person would be nice, but mostly because he wanted to find out what Sherlock was doing, and this seemed to be the only way to get in on it. 

“Okay, say I do,” he said. “Am I going on a date with a murderer?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “No.”

John collapsed on the couch, shoving his horn to the side. “One time, Sherlock,” he said. “Because I want to help with the case. This is for the case, right?”

Sherlock was stone-faced as he muttered, “Like I would want you to spend time with anyone else if it weren’t.”


	8. Sara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John goes on a date, and hears some stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, and the rest of the fic, contains references to past psychological and sexual abuse. 
> 
> The stranger-than-fiction backdrop of this murder plot is [true.](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/02/cleveland/cn2Sathz0EMJcdpYouoPjM/story.html) (Same warning for link.)

That evening, at eight o’clock, John was sitting in a mid-price pub around the corner from the music school, horn case resting by his left foot and heart racing. 

The woman who sat down opposite him was tall, auburn-haired and with a small ring protruding from her left nostril. She was fit and put-together-- and at least twenty years older than John. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach at the awkwardness that was coming up for both of them. _God dammit, Sherlock._

He saw the same surprise and dismay pass briefly over her face, but she pushed it down quickly. She smiled cautiously and extended him a hand, saying, “I’m Sara.”

John took it and shook firmly, saying, “John Watson. Good to meet you.” She settled into the chair and glanced down at his horn case. “Sherlock said you were a horn player,” she said. “Are you new in town? I haven’t seen you around.”

“Yeah, uh, yeah, I am.” John had no idea what Sherlock had told Sara to get her to go on a date with him, since the had obstinately refused to tell John absolutely anything about the date or the person he was meeting on the grounds that it would bias his judgement. He figured if he were supposed to skirt around the issue of Sherlock, though, he would have been warned of that, so he continued: “I was in America for a while. Only been been back for about a week, actually. Sherlock’s pretty much the only person I’ve met so far, so it was good of him to…” he gestured vaguely across the table. 

Her laugh was bright and tinkling, and she answered John’s silent question unhesitatingly: “Oh, he’s such a sweetheart. I’ve been playing gigs with him for a while, but he always seemed so shy. I’m a cellist, so I’ve never had all that much reason to talk to him, anyway. I was so surprised, he just caught me outside of the stage door of the Royal Albert last night and said he’d met a man who he couldn’t stop thinking about matching me with. He seemed so earnest, how could I say no?”

John grinned, imagining the role Sherlock had played for Sara to get her to agree to this. He probably _was_ a sweetheart, when he set his mind to it. And then he realized Sherlock had probably played the role of the clueless kid on purpose, so that he and Sara could laugh off the awkwardness of their inappropriate age difference. 

“He is sweet,” John agreed, stifling the urge to laugh out loud as he said it. “Not sure he understands much about dating, though. I mean, I’m happy to meet someone new, don’t get me wrong. But—“ 

“Agreed,” cut in Sara, sparing him the task of having to say _you’re way too old for me._

He shrugged. “Guess you’re stuck with me for the evening.”

She grinned at him, and the tension that had been hanging between them since she’d entered was broken. “It’s certainly no hardship,” she said. “Actually, it’ll be nice to talk to another ex-ex-pat. Where were you, in America?”

“Oklahoma,” said John, pulling a grimace. “Military band. Not exactly a thriving cultural hub, but it was good for me at the time. You?”

“Cleveland,” she said. “So… cultural hub, sure, with the downside of a river so polluted it literally catches fire. And. You know. The rest of it.” 

John raised his eyebrows. “Catches fire?”

“Yeah,” Sara said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, a long time ago. More of a local legend than an actual health hazard. Still.”

“Symbolic, I guess,” John offered. “Still, must’ve been nice to be somewhere with so much going on musically.”

She nodded slowly, like the proposition was actually one she needed to give a bit of thought. “There was,” she said. “A lot going on. Definitely.”

There was something in her eyes, the way she didn’t quite meet his gaze with her small, reassuring smile, that made the hair on the back of John’s neck stand up. Sherlock had wanted him to talk to Sara for a reason. So far, the only thing it seemed they had in common that Sherlock didn’t was that they had both spent time in America. Whatever it was that she had just pointedly not told him, John felt sure was what Sherlock needed to know. 

He decided to just keep talking, hoping to circle back around to whatever had happened to her in Cleveland. “Lots going on musically here, too,” he admitted. “I guess I’ve got to remember that. It’s almost harder, I’m realizing, when there’s so much to choose from, you know?” She nodded. “When I was in Fort Sill, anything that was happening in town that I was even vaguely interested in, of course I’d go, or join, or whatever. Every so often I’d drive to Oklahoma City or Wichita Falls-- for a concert, a play, a particularly accomplished high school drum line, I wasn’t too picky.” He shook his head. “Being here, I could pack my schedule with events every moment of the day and not even scratch the surface. How do you choose, you know?”

Sara nodded fervently. “Exactly,” she said. “Exactly, yes. It was crazy in Cleveland, honestly. Everyone thought they were going to be the next big thing. I mean… some of them actually were. But still.”

John nodded. “I’d imagine that’s… its own unique environment. Suppose we get it a bit here, but I don’t notice, to be honest. There tend to be a lot fewer delusions of grandeur in the winds and brass-- at least nobody thinks they’re destined to be the next big soloist.”

They talked back and forth for a few minutes more, comparing who they knew both in London and in the States. There wasn’t a huge overlap— the age and location differences made sure of that— but it turned out a few of John’s superiors in the band had been freelancers in Cleveland, and they both settled into the easy familiarity of people with enough mutual friends to to feel thoroughly in their element.

Finally a waiter arrived to take their order, bored and not even a little bit curious, obviously, about the nature of the relationship going on at the table. John ordered a pint and some fries, and Sara ordered a burger with an enormous number of extra toppings. “I’m starving,” she laughed as the waiter headed back to the kitchen. 

“Eat what you want,” said John, feeling light and free. He had almost forgotten that he was here on Sherlock’s instructions— he and Sara genuinely got on, and he felt a twinge of regret that he was still, to some extent, lying to her. “You know, since we’ve established we’re not about to become romantically involved here, I’ll admit I’ve never understood why so many women feel the need to apologize for eating. Not to stereotype, you know, just—“

“No, it’s true,” Sara sighed. “You’re right. Just a social thing, I guess. Plus, I used to run with some real manipulative assholes.” 

The statement hung over the table. It was an invitation to a confidence, and John took it. 

“High-profile classical musicians? Manipulative assholes? Surely not,” he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. 

She rolled her eyes. “I know, right? Actually, that’s part of why I came back to London, to be honest.” She paused, and John was grateful for the interruption of their beers arriving at the table. He took a long sip and just looked at her, waiting for her to fill the silence. 

She shook her head. “Anyway, that’s ancient history. You didn’t come here to hear me talk about the bad old days.”

“You kidding?” John put his glass down and met her eyes. “Isn’t listening to older musicians talk about the olden times the whole point of being a young musician? I’d better take advantage of it while I can still claim the latter category.”

Sara chuckled, but then her mouth set. “Okay,” she said, “well, this is a doozy. What do you know about James Levine?”

 

Two hours later, John slipped through the doors of 221b Baker St, a little unsteady on his feet. 

Sherlock, unsurprisingly, was sitting at the desk in the sitting room, and rose to meet him immediately. “Four drinks?” He asked. 

“Close,” John said. “Couldn’t finish the fourth. I haven’t been drinking much for the past few years, to be honest. Took me a bit by surprise.” 

Sherlock’s eyes raked him up and down, but he made no further deductions out loud. Instead he flopped down on the couch and closed his eyes. “Tell me everything,” he instructed, “quickly, before the details become fuzzy in your mind. Your recall is so imperfect anyway, best to get it out of your brain as soon as possible and into mine.” 

John was too tipsy to care that he was being insulted, and he sank down onto the far end of the couch instead of onto his chair, lifting Sherlock’s bare feet and placing them in his lap. They were long and elegant, just like every other part of him, and John enjoyed the weight of them on his thighs, Sherlock tensed slightly, but didn’t pull away, and John closed his eyes, feeling perfectly content. No. Not perfectly content, there was something he had to do, something— oh, right. Sherlock was waiting for a story. A story that was currently burning it’s way through John’s brain like a hot iron. 

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, opening his eyes and trying to clear his head. “The stories she told. What the _fuck._ ”

“Yes, John, the stories,” said Sherlock, deliberately patiently. “Well done, I knew you’d get her to talk. Now if you could actually recall them, that would be of much more use to the case than you drunkenly massaging my feet.” 

John looked down to find that his hands had indeed made their way to the soles of Sherlock’s feet, where his fingers were digging gently into the muscles free of his conscious control. Since Sherlock hadn’t said to stop, he didn’t. He took a deep breath.

“Sara,” he said, “was in… a cult.” He paused, waiting for that to sink in. 

Sherlock just waited. “Yes,” he finally said impatiently, when it was clear John needed prompting to continue.

“You knew that?” said John, feeling put out despite himself. Of _course_ Sherlock had known that much. What would it take to surprise the man? 

“Yes, I knew that much. _Details,_ John.”

John raised his hand, swaying slightly. “A cult,” he announced, “headed by James Levine.”

John felt a flare of triumph shoot through him as Sherlock cracked his eyes open and pushed himself up on his elbows. “Levine? The music director of the Metropolitan Opera?”

Grinning widely, John raised his eyebrows archly at Sherlock. “Really, Sherlock,” he said in as close an imitation of the detective’s inflection as he could get while sloshed, “do you know _another_ James Levine? Do keep up.”

Sherlock huffed out a breath that sounded suspiciously like suppressed laughter, and swatted John’s arm as he flopped back onto the cushion. John’s hands were still running over the soles of his feet, and for an instant the moment seemed _perfect,_ and John never wanted it to end. 

Ah, yes. Case. Murder. Cult. Okay. “Sara went to school in Cleveland,” said John, “towards the end of Levine’s time there. She was, quite obviously, the best cellist in the school, and Levine took an interest in the most promising of his fellow students. Mostly men, either out of preference or just statistics-- there still weren’t all that many women in the upper ranks, at the time. But he took a shine to her.”

John took a deep breath, focusing on the feeling of his hands rubbing Sherlock’s feet rhythmically. Sara’s story had been-- intense. It helped that he was fairly drunk, but it still felt like a lot to tell on someone else’s behalf. Even if it was for a very good reason. 

Sara had told him the details with the combination of sadness and humour that was the hallmark of someone who had done a lot of therapy, and enough therapy to know that she would never feel entirely OK about it. 

“Levine took a shine to her when she was playing in the University Circle Orchestra, which he conducted. It was a big honour, to be invited to join his in-group. God, the way she described him, even now, it was like… like she still kind of wishes that it could have been true, you know? That his magnetism had something real behind it, and not-- well.”

Sherlock’s fingers were steepled under his chin now. He looked like he was a million miles away, which John comprehended probably meant he was the most present that he had ever experienced him. 

“Being in the in-group meant a lot of nightly meetings to talk about music, and study scores, and listen to recordings. And it also meant…” John cast his mind around for an accurate way of summarizing everything Sara had described, and went with, “abuse, I guess. Is the word for it. They weren’t allowed to interact with the outside world, were supposed to cut off their families, not date outside the group. There would be tests like, quick, there’s a burning house and you can only save one person-- Levine or your mother, who do you choose? Or, there’s a human child, and an original score in Beethoven’s own hand-- and you have to choose. And you can probably deduce what the right answer was.”

Sherlock hummed. 

“And there was… more. God, weird shit. Physical abuse, sexual-- Sherlock…” John trailed off. He felt suddenly very... slimy. Sara had told him… a lot of things. Things she had probably assumed he wasn’t going to repeat. 

“Do you really need to know the details? Is it necessary for the case?”

“Hmm. Not the details you’re concerned about, no. Tell me about the people. Did she mention any specific people that she knew from those days?”

John cast his mind back. “Yeah… quite a few. A lot of them I’d heard of. Despite all the shit they went through, a lot of the, went on to become quite successful musicians. Um, I don’t remember some of their names, but I remember their positions, like the concertmaster in—“

Sherlock waved his hand. “Not necessary. You said they were supposed to be cut off from the outside world. Did any… make such connections anyway?”

“Well… lots, I assume,” said John. “They were generally punished. One guy tried to propose to another guy’s sister, and they were going to get married, and then Levine made him leave her at the altar.”

Sherlock sat up so suddenly that John started. “Fabulous,” he breathed. 

“Er, no, it sounded pretty awful, actually,” put in John. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, then glared at him suspiciously. “You _knew_ I was referring to the effect of this information on the case, John.”

“Which is?”

“Sara Clearhouse was in a cult with Even Drebber’s murderer.”


	9. Chapter 9

After declaring John’s research to have been extremely helpful, Sherlock tried to get Lestrade on the phone. John reasoned that it was late, and Lestrade was probably _sleeping_ like a regular person, so Sherlock left a curt voicemail: “Lestrade. Our murderer. I have a motive, and a witness to the same. You’re very keen on warrants, so I’d suggest you get one soon.” Then he had threw the violin onto his shoulder and started in. 

He wasn’t practicing, John reflected from the other end of the couch. Not trying to get better, the way John was every time be brought the horn to his lips. Just… playing. 

John was, admittedly, a bit put out that Sherlock didn’t seem to want to let him in on the significance of his information about a music student in America leaving his fiancée at the altar years ago.

Sherlock’s reticence was irritating, but… oh. _Oh._

“Okay, deduction incoming,” said John, in a rare moment of silence as Sherlock paused to pluck some loose hairs off his bow. “You’re a bit of a show-off.”

Sherlock’s bow stilled momentarily. “Not a very impressive leap of logic,” he said. 

“That wasn’t the deduction. My deduction is, you’re enjoying keeping me in the dark now, because that way you’ll get to lay out the whole story in one fell swoop when the case is closed.” 

Sherlock didn’t say anything, but he smiled slightly and rested the violin on his knee, plucking at it absently. 

John flushed with the delicious feeling of having figured out something about Sherlock. He was an open book, really if you paid attention to him. And paying attention was certainly no hardship. John leaned back on the couch cushion and watched Sherlock’s hair fall around his face as he ran his fingers up and down the strings. He looked almost peaceful; John was struck by the reality that he had never once felt peaceful while playing the French horn. 

Sara’s voice echoed through his head. _It really got to me, for a while,_ she had said. _Music started to feel like this horrible obligation, a trap. It was the most important thing in the universe, and I knew that because he said it was. But it felt like an enormous cloud of doom hanging over my head all the time— so how could I willingly choose to walk away? I used to have fantasies of horrible accidents, of a bus running over my fingers so I could never play again, because that felt like the only way to walk away from the whole thing with my dignity intact._

“Do you ever wish that something happened, and you had to stop playing?” The words tumbled from John’s mouth, in a flash of courage that he stopped feeling as soon as they were out. They hung in the air, heavy. 

Sherlock took his bow off the string slowly, and turned around to face John. His face was drawn. "No," he said softly.

Shit. Well, too late now. Sherlock was clearly waiting for an explanation. John sighed. He didn’t feel like sharing anything more of Sara’s story; he’d broken her trust enough. He cast his mind around for something that could explain to Sherlock how she’d made him feel.

"I heard this story once about Pablo Casals," he said slowly. "No idea if it's true. But the story is, that a bookshelf fell over on him once. And he fell down and found his left hand pinned under the shelf. And he was okay, it turned out not to injure him at all, but he said later that in the moment before he realized that he was unhurt, lying on the floor with his hand pinned by this bookshelf, his only thought was, 'oh, thank God I don't have to play the cello any more.'"

Sherlock put his violin in the open case and lay back on the couch, steepling his fingers like he was being presented with a case to solve. His toes made their way insidiously onto John’s lap again. "Well," he said, "probably by that time he could have retired, had he wanted to."

John shook his head. "Not the point," he said. "He didn't want to retire. He didn't want to make the _choice_ , to give up something that he loved and had worked so hard at. He wanted the choice taken away from him. Or some small part of him did."

Sherlock's eyes closed. John stared at him, imagining that he was Sherlock himself, what he had seen on John’s face. He had absolutely no idea.

"I don't feel that way about the violin," said Sherlock. He fell silent, tense.

"But?" prompted John, because there did seem to be a _but_.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open. "Yes," he said. "The answer is yes. I understand. A physical impossibility, of course, but if a bookshelf were to fall on my-- my intellect-- my ability to both see and observe-- yes. I would think the same as Casals. I would never _wish_ it; I have no desire to be other than what I am. And it would destroy me, probably. But it would be..." he trailed off.

"A relief," supplied John.

Sherlock didn't nod, didn't hum, didn't make any indication that his part of the conversation was concluded, but somehow John still felt that it was his turn.

"I do feel that way, about the horn," he said. "It was, you know, magical at first. Something that I was good at, something that made me special. When I decided I wanted to do it for a living, though..." he shrugged. Sherlock was watching him through the slits of his half-open eyes. "I guess I just started caring about what other people thought of me a lot more." He ran his fingers through his hair nervously. "A problem you don't seem to have."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Sherlock.

"What? You do care about what people think of you?"

Sherlock affixed him with that same intense glare that he was first given John in the musicology classroom, but there was something else behind it now. He looked almost... lost. And his voice was hesitant when he said, "No. I do not care... about what _people_ think of me."

The realization hit John like a collision into a wall. Sherlock cared what _John_ thought about him. He had not simply been dragging John around on this case for lack of anything better to do; the last few days had been as important for Sherlock as they had been for John.

And John suddenly remembered that, despite his genius, and the prickliness that passed for confidence, Sherlock was _young._ He didn't know how to say this.

Taking a deep breath, John stood and crossed over to Sherlock’s portion of the couch, settling himself on the edge of where Sherlock was lying, his hips beside Sherlock's belly.

His hand started to come up to rest on Sherlock's arm, but then he thought of Sherlock's extreme reaction every time John had touched him in a conversation so far. "May I..." his hand hovered in the air.

Sherlock didn't say anything. Instead, he reached his own hand up, and took John's, and placed it on his own chest.

John thought for a moment that he could feel Sherlock’s heart beating through his chest; but no. That was wrong. You can’t feel someone’s heartbeat through the middle of their breastbone. It almost _felt_ like he could, though, and the moment was dizzying. He knew he needed to say something. Sherlock had moved this thing along a tiny bit, given John as much intimacy as he knew how to give. Now it was John’s turn. 

He had no idea what to say. 

_Are you interested in me? Um, sexually?_

No. 

_So, d’you have a girlfriend? A boyfriend? It’s all fine, you know._

Hell no. 

_It’s been two days and I want to stay with you for the rest of my life. Will you let me?_

Christ no. But hey, at least that one was honest. 

He decided to go with honest. 

“Would it be a good thing right now if I kissed you?”

Silence hung in the air. Sherlock stared up into his face, agonizingly unreadable. 

John sighed. He had said it, and it was done. He wouldn’t really dig himself deeper into a hole if he just continued with the honesty. “It’s not really fair,” he said. “I think you can tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me.” Sherlock nodded in confirmation. “But I actually need to to speak with words.”

A tiny smile quirked the edges of Sherlock’s mouth. “I was given to understand that this was the one area where normal people are generally able to deduce each other’s thoughts.”

“That sounds like a yes.” 

Sherlock frowned thoughtfully. He still didn’t say anything, and John felt like his chest was on fire. Like his brain was on fire. God, how long was this going to go on for? 

Sherlock reached up and tugged on his shoulders. Not downwards into a kiss, but sideways, pulling John towards the back of the sofa from where he was sitting on the edge. John lost his balance, forced to lean over and plant his palms on either side of Sherlock’s chest to avoid falling on top of him entirely. “Sherlock, what--” he began, but was cut off by Sherlock using his momentary disorientation to push his knees around and behind him, so that John was closer to lying on the couch than sitting on it, then grabbing John’s hips and pushing up. Pulling John on top of him. He landed ungracefully on top of Sherlock’s lanky form with a little _oof_ of expelled air, shocked by the sudden full-body contact. 

Sherlock’s face hovered into view beneath his own, looking pleased. John felt like he was on overdrive trying to catalogue way too many sensations and body parts for one moment in time. Sherlock’s hands, which had travelled to his waist; the hard press of ribs against ribs. It was only the saving grace of Sherlock’s height that meant that John’s tentative erection was pressed into Sherlock’s lower belly and not directly into his crotch. His legs were tangled up pell-mell with Sherlock’s. He could feel Sherlock’s breath on his cheek. 

He tried to collect himself. Sherlock still hadn’t said anything, and John had the sudden realization that for Sherlock, pulling John bodily on top of him _was_ saying something.

God, what he would give to hear _yes, please touch me, please kiss me, John,_ in Sherlock’s deep baritone. They would have to talk about communications styles, John thought wildly, later-- if this was going to be-- well, anything. But that was a thought for another time. First it had to-- become that. 

He tipped his head down and brushed his lips against Sherlock’s. 

Sherlock didn’t do anything, just stared back at him, eyes open. A white-hot bolt of fear lanced through John at the thought that maybe he had gotten it wrong. But then, maybe he hadn’t He would give it one more try, he decided-- if Sherlock didn’t do something to reciprocate or at least confirm that this was wanted…

He dipped his head again and pressed their lips together. This time, to his enormous relief, Sherlock’s lips parted, and _oh/_. The floodgates had opened and Sherlock was kissing him messily, first holding John’s head with his impossibly delicate hands, and then... his fingers started to roam. Down John’s neck, under the collar of his shirt to run the pads of his fingertips along John’s clavicles from centre to sides, than back up and down his arms, then of _christ_ under the hem of the shirt, pulling it up with obvious intent. John pushed himself up just enough to help Sherlock tear the shirt off his torso and then back down to start to unbutton Sherlock’s shirt. 

Sherlock froze. 

John felt the body underneath his go tense and he stopped, pulling away to look into Sherlock’s face. They were both panting, with surprise as much as with effort or arousal, but Sherlock looked terrified in a way that sent a bolt of fear through John. 

“No?” he managed to ask, hoping Sherlock would be able to figure out both the question and his own answer. 

“I’m…” Sherlock paused. “I don’t know.” Underneath him, John felt Sherlock’s heartbeat slowing back into normal range. He closed his eyes, and John felt something in his chest wanting to crack open at how defeated Sherlock looked. He closed his eyes before murmuring, “This is… not an area of expertise.” 

“It’s okay,” whispered John back. A liquid sense of relief poured through him. This all felt so _big_. He might be more sexually experienced than Sherlock, but that doesn’t mean he knew what he was doing here. Maybe it was best that they slow this down.

“Do you want to… stay together tonight? Touching you?” 

Sherlock nodded quickly and enthusiastically, and John sighed in relief and allowed himself to chuckle a little. “Good,” he said. “I don’t know if I would ever have gotten to sleep after that if you’d sent me upstairs for the night.” He stood up reluctantly, and offered a hand to Sherlock. He started leading Sherlock towards his own bedroom, pausing slightly in the doorway and allowing Sherlock to pull ahead of him. He might just have been lying on top of him, but somehow entering Sherlock’s bedroom felt more intimate even than that. He looked around, allowing himself to do so openly-- Sherlock will notice him looking anyway, no point in hiding it. 

It was surprisingly neat, considering the state of their kitchen, but crowded. Three bookshelves lined the wall across from the bed, with only two of them holding books; the third was entirely filled with binders and notebooks. A music stand, two extra bows, and a bag filled with packets of replacement strings was shoved into the corner by the window. On the wall across from the bookshelves, there was a large, worn poster of the periodic table. 

By the time John looked back at Sherlock, he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked-- shy. Questioning. 

John grinned and sat down next to him. “I’m not you,” he said gently. “I’m not trying to deduce you. Just looking around. Lie back.” 

Sherlock did, shuffling backwards to be able to rest his head on a pillow. The first few buttons on his shirt were still undone and he made no complaint as John reached over and started unbuttoning the rest, slowly and with deliberate detachment. He was buying himself some time, in reality. Trying to figure out what Sherlock wanted, and how he was going to figure out the desires of someone completely incapable of stating them. 

Well, he might as well start with what he knew he liked. John had caressed his back before, and he knew Sherlock had liked that. So John placed his hand on Sherlock’s sternum, and started rubbing over smooth skin and downy hairs in small circles. 

Sherlock sighed almost imperceptibly, but his brow creased. John watched his face, circling his hand firmly now, and was stuck by the thought that he had only know Sherlock for a few days. This felt ancient, like watching Sherlock’s face as he caressed his skin was a feedback loop he knew intimately, like they had been doing this forever. He drew in a shuddering breath. He was all in, he realized. He had been from the moment Sherlock looked straight through him in that practice room, with Mike smiling knowingly. 

Mike. What had Mike intended, anyway? Had he really just set them up because they were the only two people he knew who needed flatmates? Or had he seen this all along, was Mike Stamford somehow perceptive in a completely different way from Sherlock that had allowed him to see the jagged edges of two people fitting together perfectly in his mind’s eye? 

Sherlock murmered something that John, in his reverie, didn’t catch. “Hmm?” he stilled his hand for a moment, waiting. 

“I said,” said Sherlock, “Thank God.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and John had a moment of confusion where he tried to fit the idea of Sherlock’s undergoing some sort of religious experience into what he knew of the man, before Sherlock continued, “That you’re not me.”

“Thank God that I’m not you,” John repeated. He thought that statement over for a moment, and decided to try his luck at interpreting it. As he mulled it over, he pulled himself more fully onto the bed beside Sherlock, so that he could reach out to run both hands over his chest at once. 

“You… don’t want me to be _like_ you,” he started, and felt Sherlock’s muscles relaxing underneath his fingers. He slowly started moving up and out, working his fingers towards Sherlock’s shoulders, running them lightly down his neck. “You see everything, and understand more than you need or want to about the world around you, but… just because you can deduce something, doesn’t mean you have the capacity to process it, really. Or act on it. That’s why you didn’t want to join the Yard,” he realized. “You don’t just need Lestrade to provide you with cases. You need him to do the bits that you don’t have the bandwidth for. Your work is done after you’ve solved the case in the abstract. You’re like a program in need of a compiler.” John winced. “Sorry about the computer metaphor. It’s not that I think you’re… robotic, or uncreative-- God, no-- it’s just--”

“No,” Sherlock interrupted, “you’re correct. Completely correct. A program in need of a compiler.” He actually looked quite pleased at that, eyes still closed but with a soft smile that seemed to soften all the sharp angles of his face. John started rubbing down his arms, lingering on the inside curve of his elbow and finally reaching his long, gorgeous fingers. He picked up Sherlock’s hands one by one, inspecting them, running his own fingers over every single one of Sherlock’s. God, his hands were gorgeous. 

Sherlock liked when he said things out loud, though. “God, your hands are gorgeous,” he breathed. 

“Thank you,” said Sherlock, rather formally. Then, “What else?”

John sighed, placing Sherlock’s hand back by his side. “What else about you?” he said. “Well, you seem to have a bit of difficulty just asking for what you want, yeah?”

There was a long silence. John’s insides buzzed. He tried to fill it by placing his hands on Sherlock’s sides, running them up and down his flank. 

Sherlock sighed. “When I know what I want, I will ask for it very clearly, believe me.”

John couldn’t help chuckling at that. “D’you know, I actually have no problem believing that.” 

John felt his eyes weighed down by the long day and the alcohol still in his veins. He was _exhausted._

“I think,”he said, laying himself gently down to curl beside Sherlock protectively, “I’d like to fall asleep now, touching you.”

Sherlock hummed in assent, and John allowed his eyes to drift closed.


	10. Chapter 10

John started awake when Sherlock’s phone rang.

John woke up blearily, glaring into the darkness and trying to figure out where he was. His small room in Oklahoma-- no. Not his dorm room at the RCM, either. Not his bedroom n Baker Street. Sherlock was beside him. Sherlock was picking up the phone and saying “Lestrade. Took you long enough.” He was in Sherlock’s room, right. Okay. 

He could hear Lestrade’s voice over the phone, tinny but clear in the silence of the morning. “I’m headed to the station to take a look at your evidence, okay? The warrant will be a while yet. Just hang tight, Sherlock, okay?” he sounded remarkably patient for someone talking with Sherlock on the phone before the sun was up-- because sure enough, John could see out the window that it was still definitively night-time. He remembered leaving his phone in the sitting-room, and staggered blearily out to check the time on it. 5:38 AM. 

As he turned back to go collapse back into Sherlock’s bed-- not use questioning his right to be there when he was so goddamned tired-- the light flicked on. When John entered the doorway, he saw Sherlock was already tucking in the corners of the bedspread, running his fingers briskly through his sleep-rumpled hair, and very clearly done with sleeping for the night. 

“Get dressed, John,” he said. “We’re going to go arrest our man.” 

John felt a vague burning sensation behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut against the light, which felt impossibly bright. “I thought Lestrade said to hang tight for a warrant.”

“Don’t need a warrant.”

“Pretty sure you do need a warrant, to get into someone’s house.”

Sherlock opened a drawer and started changing his pants, with apparently no thought to whether that was a thing he was supposed to do in front of John. Apparently it was, now. John very pointedly did not stare at the curve of Sherlock’s arse as he slid a fresh pair of briefs up his pale skin. 

There wasn’t really anything else to do, so he continued watching as Sherlock pulled on socks and trousers and a pressed white shirt. His movements were unhurried but precise. Mesmerising. 

Dressed, he turned back to look John in the eye. “Not if he invites us in.”

Fourty minutes later, John nervously glancing around the hallway of the mid-price hotel that Sherlock had led them to. It was too early for service staff to be about the guests’ rooms, and the front desk clerk had barely glanced up from her book as the two of them had strode confidently through the lobby. Well, Sherlock had strode confidently. John had jogged, a little, and tried not to look like that was what he had to do to keep up. 

Sherlock led him to a room, then taken a step back and stared at the carpet around the door and the door itself. Seemingly satisfied, he stepped up to it and rapped loudly on the wood. 

“Sherlock,” John hissed, “people are sleeping!” it was a fairly gutless protest, though-- it was obvious that they had come here to wake someone up, if they happened to be asleep, and since the person in question was supposedly a murderer, John hadn’t objected. 

From inside the room, there was a rustling, and a groan. John heard footsteps approach the door, then stop as the person inside looked through the little one-way peephole in hotel doors. 

The door opened a little, still held in place by the chain. A strikingly blue eye peered out at them. “Who are you?” said the man’s voice, a lilting tenor with an American accent John couldn’t quite place. 

John had been wondering, in the back of his mind, how Sherlock had convinced Sara to go out with him. Had wondered what Sherlock looked like when he was being something other than what he was. Now he got his answer. 

Sherlock’s entire demeanor changed. He seemed to shrink in on himself, smaller and ingratiating, innocuous. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry to wake you up. This is really awkward. Um, I just-- look, someone told me that you were someone to talk to-- that you wanted to talk to people about Levine.” 

The door closed, the chain slid in its rail and it opened again, fully this time. A tall, blond man stood in the doorway, looking guarded but fully awake, now. He squinted out into the hallway, taking in Sherlock and John. Sherlock was smiling nervously, and John tried to follow suit. 

The man held the door open wordlessly, not so much inviting them in as allowing Sherlock to insinuate himself into the room. When John followed, he glanced around, realizing suddenly that they were alone in a hotel room with a suspected murderer. He seemed harmless enough-- brawny but wholesome-looking like a farm boy, and rubbing at the back of his head as he watched to strangers take in his room. 

“So,” he said. “Uh, good thing you came this early, actually, I’m flying out this morning.”

Sherlock had his back to the room, having opened the curtains to the early-morning light. 

The man cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “I’m Jack, and you are…”

“Sherlock,” he said, turning around and offering a hand formally. 

Jack extended his hand towards Sherlock. “Nice to meet you--”

It happened so fast that John barely had time to process what was happening. Jack was standing, slightly hunched over, with the wrist he had just extended in greeting handcuffed to the leg of the tall hotel desk. Sherlock was holding his other wrist, moving considerably more slowly as he fit a zip tie around it and fed it into one of the metal loops of the handcuffs.

Jack was spluttering, but too shocked to do anything, for a moment. The time seemed to stretch suspended in the air, with Sherlock methodically immobilizing him, John staring, and Jack boggling. 

Then, he shouted. 

Before John had time to intend to do it, he found himself knocking the man’s legs out from under him and clamping a hand over his mouth. He felt a brief shock of pain as his own knees hit the floor to manoeuvre Jack into position against the desk with his wrists both trapped behind him and John’s hand over his mouth, and John could see Sherlock’s face out of the corner of his eye, looking briefly shocked and then _pleased_ in a way that made John’s spine tingle, right up until reality hit him that he had just assaulted someone for Sherlock. 

He glanced up. “I hope I don’t regret this.”

Sherlock kneeled down beside John to stare into Jack’s furious face, partially obscured by John’s hand. “Jack,” he said clearly. “My friend is going to release your mouth now. You’re not going to scream again, and the reason you’re not going to scream again is that your mouth will be otherwise occupied, telling us all about Even Drebber and Lena Ferrier.”

John felt the skin shift under his palm as Jack’s eyes went wide. John raised his eyebrows at the man. “So you’re going to be quiet, then?” he put in. Jack nodded, and John pulled his moist hand away and wiped it on his trousers, grimacing. 

True to his word, Jack didn’t struggle or scream. He actually seemed to relax a little, settling himself on the ground and arranging his hands behind him as comfortably as possible. He was staring at Sherlock gravely, with something very like respect. 

Sherlock plopped himself down on the bed, crossing his long legs in front of him like a kid settling down for a campfire story. After a moment, John followed, perching a little more alertly on the side of the bed, looking back and forth between his flatmate and their captive. 

Jack sighed. “I’m not surprised, to be honest,” he said. “It was sloppy. I knew it. I didn’t care, at the time. And to be honest, a part of me still doesn’t. I’ve done what I came here to do. Getting to go home would have been a bonus. I’d only like to know-- how did you find me? You don’t look like the police.”

Sherlock broke into a megawatt grin, and John couldn’t look away. It was an expression he’d never seen on him before and he immediately wanted to see it again. Very possibly it only appeared at the successful conclusion of a case. Right then, that was settled. John needed to come along on more cases. All of them, if possible. 

“I’ll tell you,” Sherlock announced. “But I do prefer, I must admit, to tell my story only once. Rather takes away from the dramatic effect if it’s a retelling. And I suspect you, too, might have something to say for the record. So we’ll both have to wait a time, I’m afraid, until some friends of mine get here.” 

Jack shrugged. “Works for me,” he said, slumping back further against the desk. His long legs sprawled out across the patterned carpet. This was not what John had imagined when he had pictured capturing a murderer. Jack smiled up lazily at him, clearly catching him staring. “Who’re you, then?” he said. “The sidekick?”

John said “Something like that” at the exact same time that Sherlock said “my partner.”

A grin spread over Jack’s face as he looked back and forth between his captors. “Ooh, this is good,” he said. “You two’ll keep me entertained.”

John’s cheeks were burning-- why, exactly, he wasn’t sure, but he continued avoiding Sherlock’s gaze for the mercifully short moment before Sherlock’s phone rang. 

“Lestrade,” he answered with relish. “Are you here? Good- you’ve held up the show long enough.” A pause. “Yes, of course I have him already. I told you I would, didn’t I? Come up to the room. No, he’s not dangerous.” A longer pause, during which Sherlock rolled his eyes back in his head as he listened to Lestrade over the phone. “I’m hanging up on you now.” He matched actions to words, dropping the phone back in his pocket. 

A few minutes later, DI Lestrade burst through the door, breathing heavily. He took one glance at the man handcuffed to the desk and rounded on Sherlock. “What the _bloody buggering fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

John started forward, unsure of what to say but intent on placating Lestrade, but it was Jack’s voice that seemed to do the trick. “Hey, woah,” he said. “Look, I wasn’t gonna kill him. There was only ever one person I was interested in killing, and from your badge, I’m assuming you already met him.”

Lestrade paused and stared down at Jack. “Is that a confession?” he asked, fumbling in his pocket to pull out a small recording device. 

“No,” cut in Sherlock, “the confession hasn’t happened yet, and it’s what we were all waiting here for you to arrive for. Have a seat, Lestrade.” 

Lestrade, looking back and forth between the calm murderer chained to the desk and the implacable violinist-detective sitting on the bed, seemed to decide that John would be the final arbiter of sanity in the room. His eyes slid to John’s, and John gave a small, reassuring nod. Lestrade heaved a sigh and sat down on bed, crossing his legs with considerably less dexterity than Sherlock. John perched beside him. 

“I think the story will flow best chronologically,” said Sherlock. “Detective Inspector, I present you Jack Ferrier, murderer of Evan Drebber. Jack, please begin with your introduction to the cult with which you became associated in Cleveland.”

Jack chuckled. “Well, I’m very curious to know how you know so much, but I guess that’ll have to wait. Sure. Well, when I was eighteen I had my sights set on a career as a pianist. I entered the Cleveland Institute of Music, and my sister Lena followed me on the violin a year later. It wasn’t long before I was aiming farther than just learning to play the piano. We had this conductor-- you know of him.” Jack gestured to Sherlock, then said aside to Lestrade, “the name of James Levine is what made me curious enough to open the door for your friend, this morning, if you were nervous about any breaking and entering issues.” Lestrade visibly relaxed. 

Jack continued: “He had something about him. Magnetic, you know? Especially for young kids coming to a school for the express purpose of giving themselves up for a greater cause. We already believed-- the melodrama of youth, you know-- that we had to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of music to ever achieve anything in this world. We just needed the altar itself, and a match. Levine gave us both. 

He had this orchestra-- the University Circle Orchestra. His favourites played there, and being his favourite meant you were destined for great things. Lena was a great violinist, and she was one of the few women in the upper echelons of the school. She was invited to join, and by that time I was an aspiring conductor, so I started hanging around with that crowd. It wasn’t easy, of course. There were frequent tests of loyalty. You had to prove that music was the most sacred thing in the world to you, that you would give up anything for it-- up to and including the sanctity of your own body. We went to his place every day around eleven. Each evening started started with music, score study, that kind of thing-- then progressed to loyalty tests, and then the sex stuff. He said that if you wanted to be able to perform, you needed to tame yourself, and the sex was supposed to somehow-- well, anyway. It made sense at the time.”

John glanced at Sherlock. This all squared exactly with what Sara had told him. Sherlock gave a small nod. “Go on.”

“Well, another aspect was, you weren’t allowed to betray the group in any way. And by betray, I mean… have any outside contact at all, really. Lots of people cut off their families stopped making friends. Lena and I had a place together, and we were both in the in-group, so it wasn’t a problem between us. But dating, that was a problem. She was a sociable person, liked meeting guys, liked going on dates. Levine didn’t like it-- we were supposed to only date between us. I ended up introducing her to Evan, in the end, kind of accidentally-- I was studying conducting seriously at that point, but I had never studied German, a necessity for a serious maestro. Evan was fluent, and he was one of Levine’s favourites. He started coming over to tutor me, and he and Lena fell for each other hard. It seemed great, for a while; they were going steady, he was an insider so it was all above-board. Eventually, though, it got serious. They started to feel more strongly about each other than they did about the group, and that was unacceptable. He proposed to her, and I was happy for them. I liked him, and she was over the moon. Did the whole ‘if you hurt her I’ll kill you’ thing, of course, but I didn’t really believe he would.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows seemed to be attempting to rise straight through his hairline and off his face entirely. Jack looked around the room, seeming to relish the attention of his audience. 

“Well, things went downhill. He had family in Canada, and wanted to move up there, and Lena was considering it. That would never do. So… Levine convinced him to leave her. I know this sounds insane, but I swear to you it actually made a kind of twisted sense at the time: he left her at that altar, for the poetry of the thing. She was devastated, and… things weren’t the same after. She was shunned from the group, and he was accepted back in. You need to understand-- this had become our whole lives. For me, too. I was so deep I actually wasn’t sure whether I should side with her or Evan. And she was so deep that she felt like she didn’t have anything left to live for. So… well, she didn’t.” Jack shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry to say that was what it took for it to click for me. After Lena died, I came to my senses. I knew what I had to do. Killing Evan Drebber became the goal of my whole life. I followed him here when he finally got away from the cult, and-- well, now, I’ve done it, and you guys have found me out somehow, but I can’t truthfully say that I regret the crime.”

Lestrade had swung into action, checking the settings on his tape recorder and jotting some things down in a little notebook. He glanced up from the page to say, “Can you describe the circumstances of the murder?”

“I can,” said Sherlock, “and perhaps Mr. Ferrier would be so kind as to correct me if there are any details I missed or got wrong.” Jack nodded amiably, and Lestrade rolled his eyes but made no comment. 

“Jack Ferrier arrived here last Thursday. You will easily find the evidence for this if you consult British Airways-- he made no attempt to conceal his identity. He had discovered Drebber’s association with the RCM from the page the school puts up announcing new professors the week before school starts-- very likely, he had some sort of alert set up to search the internet for mentions of Drebber’s name.” He glanced at Jack, who nodded in confirmation. 

“He had a general concept of how he wanted to kill him, but it took a few days to set up. He needed to be certain that Drebber would be alone for an evening, because he wanted to take his time. Make sure Drebber knew what he was dying for.”

“Damn right,” muttered Jack. Lestrade glanced at him. “So you’re confessing to that, then?” he said. 

“ _Do_ shut up, Lestrade, he already said he was confessing to everything. He had a few things to bring with him. The first was the wedding band, which you--” nodding to Lestrade-- “did me the courtesy of providing me with a reasonable facsimile of. The original, of course, had belonged to Lena, and he had kept it, both as a memento of her and of the betrayal that, in Jack’s view, ended her life. From the moment that I discovered that, it was clear that this was a crime of passion. That was corroborated, of course, by the message, which he appeared to have forced Drebber to take as dictation-- if you took the fingerprint samples from the piano keys that I indicated to you, you will find they are a match for this man.”

Lestrade started typing something out on his phone, obviously putting Sherlock’s advice into action. 

“Having advertised for the fake ring,” Sherlock continued, “it was a simple matter to trace him back here-- through the decoy he very prudently used, of course-- and search this place while he was out. All of the suggestive facts of the Levinite cult presented themselves, and were corroborated by John’s very informative romantic entanglement with another member of the cult.”

“It was _not_ a romantic entanglement,” muttered John, mostly for Lestrade’s benefit.

“The cause of death itself,” said Sherlock, “will be illustrated, I suspect, by a full toxicology report. Is that accurate, Mr. Ferrier?” 

Jack nodded, grinning wolfishly. 

John looked away. There was something indecent about Jack’s expression, utterly caring that his worst sins were being revealed for all the world to see. Like he had completed all of his work here on Earth, and couldn’t be arsed to care about anything any more. 

Instead, he focused on Sherlock as Lestrade continued jotting down notes and clarifying details. He was practically glowing with pride and purpose, and John felt himself starting to smile despite the grim situation. He remembered how kids near the Army base used to bring light-bulbs out to the field of power lines behind the base, to sneak sips of stolen booze while they watched the bulbs light faintly of their own accord from the electric thrum in the air. He felt like he _was_ the bulb, lit from within by the shadow of Sherlock’s glow, ready to expand his light outwards to whatever he wished.

They arrived home three hours after they had left, Jack having accompanied Lestrade to the station without resistance and Sherlock’s work done the moment the grand reveal was over. He was still fired up but restless, now, and John wondered if the aftermath of a case was one of the times that Sherlock would usually retreat into the drugs he kept above the fireplace. 

If it was, there was probably nothing John could do to prevent it. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

He placed a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder as soon as he had shrugged his coat off. “That was. Amazing.” He took a deep breath. “Can we… can I do it again? Work with you?”

Sherlock turned around. “I’ve figured out what I want.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The opening of Rosenkavalier](https://youtu.be/_wRLcP0foGo?t=32), and John's alternate suggestion, [Till Eulenspiegal's Merry Pranks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6lpOQz3nqI)

The last thing John had expected was for Sherlock to order him to take out his horn. 

He discovered there was actually something he had expected even less when Sherlock then ordered him to take of his clothes. 

“I have had this particular experiment in mind,” he said, “from the moment I laid eyes on you. It would appear our friendship has now progressed to the point where it would be appropriate and welcome if I were to test my hypothesis.”

There was a slight draft coming through the flat, and John felt absolutely ridiculous yanking off his trousers with his horn clutched in one hand. He shivered. “Hypothesis being?”

“That the state of your yips is sufficiently early that a mere distraction will result in a significant improvement of your playing abilities.” John was standing just in his pants now, absent-mindedly warming the metal of his mouthpiece with his hand. 

Sherlock nearly cracked his head on the bell of John’s horn when he sank to his knees and slipped his fingers into the waistband of John’s pants, yanking them down. His face was entirely focused, so John could observe-- with a slight edge of panic at how fast this was suddenly moving-- the moment that his rapidly hardening cock sprang free and bobbed in front of Sherlock’s eyes. 

Sherlock glanced up. “Do you need time to warm up?” For a moment John thought he was referring to his arousal, but Sherlock’s eyes flicked to his horn. Mechanically, John brought it to his mouth and played a short, shaky arpeggio.

He lowered the instrument. “Sherlock. This is insane.”

“Says the man who’s about to be distracted into playing the french horn,” said Sherlock, and his long fingers wrapped around the backs of John’s thighs, pulling Sherlock’s face closer. 

“This is not an approved medical treatment for focal dystonia— _ahh_ ” said John, the end of the sentence trailing off as Sherlock’s tongue swiped a stripe up the bottom of his cock, licking the drop of precum from the tip.

“How would you know? You’re not a doctor. And there are no doctors experienced in the treatment of focal dystonia of the facial muscles in Britain or the Continent, anyway.” John felt the fingers around his thighs tighten and Sherlock took a deep breath in, _smelling_ him oh that was fucking filthy, and said, “we’re in… uncharted medical territory, here.”

John took a deep breath and consciously relaxed. This was weird. But good. And Sherlock’s breath was on his prick and Sherlock’s curls were in range of his fingers, so he pushed his fingers into the curls and started petting Sherlock’s scalp. 

“You want my mouth?” said Sherlock. “You know what to do.”

It was entirely possible, considered John, that his knees would buckle from arousal before Sherlock even got his mouth on him. “What… on earth… do you expect me to play… like this?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, as if the answer should be obvious. “I expect you to play _Rosenkavalier,_ John, what else would you honestly think to play while having your cock sucked?”

John gasped as the tip of Sherlock’s tongue started making its way again from the base to the head of his cock, but managed to gasp out in retort, “by someone as insane as you? _Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks_ comes to mind.”

“I plan on ensuring—“ Sherlock bit his thigh gently— “that you don’t—“ trailed his lips up to lap at his balls— “have the rhythmic integrity for that.”

 _Christ. Mrs. Hudson is going to kill me,_ John thought, and put the horn to his lips. Deep breath, support from the belly, and a touch of wild abandon-- the opening of _Der Rosenkavalier_ was a scandalous bedroom scene, after all. 

He barely made it through the first upwards swoop of the opera’s opening when he felt the wet heat of Sherlock’s mouth engulfing him. He would have gasped if his mouth were available, but John was too well programmed to keep playing at all costs; he held on through more rapidly rising triplets and a high G which felt… rather free and easy, actually, perhaps Sherlock had a point about the distraction. 

He put the horn down when the opening excerpt finished, panting, “Okay? Happy? I’m going to fall over if you keep doing that, Sherlock, _seriously_ \--”

Sherlock laughed, and pulled back. His lips were wet and shiny, and he was smiling confidently. “Fine,” he said, “You can put the horn down. But only if you promise to keep practicing at home, so I can always be reminded you’re here. And to come out with me on cases. And to play the Brahms horn trio with me.”

John practically threw the horn down onto the couch. He wasn’t at all sure that he would be playing well enough to take on the Brahms any time soon, but Sherlock did seem to be good for him. What the hell. 

“Fine, fine. Anything.”

Sherlock pushed himself to his feet, and John was momentarily disappointed until he said, “Shall we finish this on the bed, then?” 

***

The next morning, John woke up to the sound of the violin. 

He pushed himself up, momentarily startled until he remembered that he was in Sherlock’s bedroom, not his own. Sherlock was gone, and apparently playing scales in lieu of breakfast. 

He turned around as John made his way into the sitting room. “Did I wake you?”

John shrugs. “Did you mean to wake me? In any case, you probably didn’t. I can sleep through violin just fine. Was I too much of a bed hog, or what?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I don’t sleep all that much,” he admitted. Then the strange, unsure look came back into his eye as he said, “I suppose you’ll get used to that…?”

John grinned, and caught sight of his horn sitting on the couch, unmoved from where he discarded it the previous night. “I will,” he said. “And that’s a promise.”


End file.
